IBrrqugt 


Te 


Gommemorate 


TBG 


framing   and    §igning 


er  TBG 


Constitution  of  tfjr  SiJnitftJ  ^^tntris. 


BANQUET 


GIVKN    1!V   THK 


LEARNED   SOCIETIES   OF   PHILADELPHIA 

AT  THK 

AMERICAN  ACADEMY  OE  MUSIC 

SEI'TKMHKR     17,    1S87 


CLOSING   THE   CEREMONIES   IN   COMMEMORATION   OF  THE 
FRAMING  AND   SIGNING 


Constitution  of  ti^c  Clnitrti  states 


•  •"»     .  : » 


» •»  • »  ••, 


PHILADELPHIA 

PRINTED   FOR  THE  COMMITTEE 

1888 


••   •  •  •  r  *   ■ 


PKINTHD   UY 

J.  11.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY, 

PHIUkDBLPHIA. 


^^^ 


BANQUET 


COMMEMORA  riNG    THE    KRAMINc; 

tlK  TllK 

CONSTITUTION   OF  THE   UNITED   STATES, 

Septf.mdek   17,   18(87. 


The  thought  naturally  suggested  itself  that  on  the  occasion 
of  the  Centennial  Celebration  of  the  Framing  and  Promulgation 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  the  older  institutions 
of  learning,  of  art,  and  of  science  in  Philadelphia  should  bear 
some  important  part.  Their  origin  was  due  to  the  same  intelli- 
gent and  energetic  public  spirit  which  made  Philadelphia  the 
home  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, and  which  has  caused  her  to  become  the  shrine  of  Ameri- 
can patriotic  sentiment.  Their  pro.sperous  careers,  beginning 
at  the  time  when  it  was  the  ambition  of  every  man  of  scientific 
attainments  to  become  a  member  of  the  American  Philosophical 
Society,  when  every  physician  regarded  Benjamin  Rush  as  the 
head  of  his  profession,  and  every  artist  felt  a  pride  in  the  rec- 
ognition accorded  to  the  talents  of  Benjamin  West,  continued 
down  to  the  present,  as  exemplified  in  the  activities  of  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  the  Franklin  Institute,  and  the 
Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania,  are  a  proof  that  under  the 
Constitution  which  provides  for  civil  government  and  protects 
religious  liberty  is  also  fostered  every  agency  needful  for  the 
development  of  the  highest  civilization.  The  dignity  of  these 
institutions,  and  their  harmonious  relations  toward  each  other, 

3 


made  it  eminently  proper  that,  actin<j  in  concert,  they  should,  in 
some  suitable  way,  entertain  the  distinguished  guests  of  Phila- 
delphia, and  close  the  scene  of  that  impressive  celebration. 

The  suggestion  made  in  the  first  instance  by  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania  met  with  a  cordial  response  from  the  other 
Societies  interested,  and  resulted  in  the  appointment  of  com- 
mittees from  the  active  membership  of  each  of  them.      They 

were : 

William  Pkppf.r,  M.D., 

Provost  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

Frederick  Fraley, 
President  of  the  American  Philosophical  Society. 

S.  Weir  Mitchell,  M.D., 
President  of  the  College  of  Physicians  of  Philadelphia. 

Isaac  Elwell, 
President  of  the  Law  Academy  of  Philadelphia. 

Brinton  Coxk, 
President  of  Ihe  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania. 

JosKl'H   M.  Wll.SON, 
President  of  the  Franklin  Institute  of  the  Slate  nf  Pennsylvania. 

Gkorge  S.  Pepper, 
President  of  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  the  Fine  Arts. 

Joseph  Keidv,  M.D., 
President  of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  of  Philadelphia. 

Charles  C.  Harrison,  William  Sellers, 

Samuel  Dickson,  William  P.  Tatham, 

Samuel  W.  Pennypacker,  Edwin  T.  Eisenbrev, 

CADWAI.ADER    BlIlDLE,  FREDERICK   D.  STONE, 

Wharton  Barker,  Charlks  Henry  Hart, 

William  A.  Ingham,  Henry  Whelen,  Jr., 

John  Ashhurst,  Jr.,  M.D.,  John  H.  Packard,  M.D., 

Richard  A.  Cleemann,  M.D.,  Thomas  Meehan, 

J.  Granville  Leach,  Jacob  Binder, 

Richard  C.  McMurtrie,  William  Henry  Rawi.e, 

George  De  B.  Keim,  Theodore  D.  Rand. 


The  following  organization  was  effected  : 

Wii.i.iAM  Pepper,  M.D.,  Chairman. 
Wharton  Hakkkr,  Treasurer.  Frkderick  D.  Stone,  Secretary. 

LIST  OF  COMMITTEES. 

EXECUTIVE. 
Samuel  W.  Pennypacker,  Charles  Henry  Hart, 

S.  Weir  Mitchell,  M.D.,  J.  Granville  Leach, 

Samuel  Dickson,  Theodore  D.  Rand, 

Cadwaladkr  Biddlk,  William  P.  Tatham. 

FINANCE. 
Frederick  Fraley,  William  Sellers, 

Wharton  Barker,  George  De  B.  Keim, 

Charles  C.  Harrison. 

INVITATIONS. 
J.  Granville  Leach,  Sami'El  Dickson, 

S.  Weik  Mitchell,  M.D.,  John  Asiiiu;kst,  Jr.,  M.D., 

Charles  Henry  Hart. 

RECEPTION. 
Charles  Henry  Hart,  John  H.  Packard,  M.D., 

S.  Weir  Mitchell,  M.D.,  William  A.  Ingham, 

Henry  Whei.kn,  Jr. 

MUSIC   AND   DECORATION. 

Edwin  T.  Eisenbrey,  Thomas  Meehan, 

Richard  A.  Clee.mann,  M.D.,  Jacob  Binder, 

Theodore  D.  Rand. 

DINNER. 
Richard  A.  Cleemann,  M.D.,  Edwin  T.  Eisenhrey, 

Cadvvalader  BiDDLE,  Henry  Wiielen,  Jr., 

William  A.  Ingham. 

TOAST. 
Samuel  Dickson,  Richard  C.  McMurtrie, 

William  Pepper,  M.D.,  William  P.  Tatham, 

Isaac  Elwell. 


Invitations  were  sent  to  the  President  of  the  United  States 
and  members  of  his  Cabinet;  the  Chief  Justice  and  the  Asso- 
ciate Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court ;  the  leading  members  of 
Congress;  the  General  of  the  Army;  the  Admiral  of  the 
Navy ;  F"oreign  Ministers,  and  other  persons  noted  for  their 
achievements  in  war  and  in  statecraft,  for  their  attainments  in 
literature,  art,  and  science,  and  for  their  social  prominence. 

Invitations  were  accepted  by  the  following  persons : 

GUESTS. 

President  Grover  Cleveland. 

Ex-President  Rutherford  B.  Hayes. 

Ex-Vice-president  Hannibal  Hamlin. 

Secretary  of  State  Thomas  F.  Bayard. 

Skcrktary  of  the  Treasury  Charlf.s  .S.  Kmki  imld. 

Ciiikf-Justick  Morrison  k.  Waite. 

Justice  Samuel  F.  Miller. 

Justice  John  .M.  Harlan. 

Justice  Stanley  Maithews. 

Justice  Samuel  IIlatchkord. 

Justice  Horace  Gray. 

Ex-Justice  William  Strong,  Pennsylvania. 

General  Philip  H.  Sheridan. 

General  J.  M.  Schofikld. 

Rear-Admiral  S.  B.  Luce. 

Chang  Yen  Hoon,  Minister  of  China. 

Sliu  Cheou  Pon,  First  Secretary. 

Liang  Shung,  Attach^. 

Li  Jar  Yeu,  China. 

Chu  Kai  Doi,  China, 

M.  Jusanmi  Riuichi  Kuki,  Minister  of  Jajxin. 

Se5Sor  Don  Viscrnte  G.  Quesada,  Argentine  Repul)lic. 

SeRor  Domingo  Gana,  Minister  of  Chili. 

Count  Gaston  d'Arschot,  Belgium  Legation. 

Sir  Lyon  Playfair,  England. 

Count  Chambrun,  FVance. 

S.  P.  Makietchang,  Special  Imperial  Envoy  of  China. 


Consi'I.-Gknkral  J.  K.  I'lantkn,  Nctlieilaiids. 

Count  Galli,  Italy. 

Hon.  John  Jamks  In(;ai.i.s,  Vrtsidciit /.  /.  U.  S.  Senate. 

Hon.  Wm.I-Iam  M.  Evarts,  New  York. 

Hon.  Carl  Schurz,  New  Ynrk. 

Hon.  JosKl'H   R.  Hawi.kv,  Connetlicut. 

Hon.  J.  Randoi  I'll  Tih"kkr,  Virginia. 

Hon.  Samuki.  J.  Kandai.i.,  IVnnsylvani.i. 

Hon.  Chaki.ks  I'RANCis  Adams,  Mass.ichiisetls. 

Hon.  John  Jay,  New  York. 

Hon.  John  Lkk  Carroi.i.,  Marylaml. 

Hon.  Gkorge  (Jray,  Delaware. 

CoMMoooKE  Colby  M.  Ciikster,  U.S.N. 

General  John  C.  Fremont. 

General  John  F.  Hartranj-t,  Phil.idelpliia. 

General  Richard  C.  Drum,  Ailjiitant-General  U.S.A. 

General  David  McM.  Gregg,  U.S.A. 

General  Richard  H.  Jackson,  U.S.A. 

Colonel  Daniel  C.  I.amoni',  Private  Secretary  to  the  President. 

Colonel  Frederick  D.  Grant,  New  York. 

Colonel  John  P.  Nicholson,  Philadelphia. 

Colonel  Michael  V.  Sheridan,  U.S.A. 

Colonel  Stanhope  Blunt,  U.S.A. 

Colonel  Sanford  C.  Kellogg,  U.S.A. 

Commander  Francis  M.  Green,  U.S.N. 

Captain  Robert  Boyd,  U.S.N. 

Colonel  Commys,  Netherland  Navy. 

Colonel  Louis  H.  Carpenter,  U.S.A. 

General  Daniel  H.  Hastings,  Adjutant-General  of  Pennsylvania. 

General  William  S.  Stryker,  AdjuLant-Gcneral  of  New  Jersey. 

Hon.  Edward  M.  Paxson,  Supreme  Court  of  Pennsylvania. 

Hon.  Henry  Green,  Supreme  Court  of  Pennsylvania. 

Hon.  James  P.  Sterrett,  Supreme  Court  of  Pennsylvania. 

Chief-Justice  Joseph  P.  Comegys,  Delaware. 

Judge  Hugh  L.  Bond,  Baltimore. 

Judge  John  Alexander  Jameson;  Chicago. 

Hon.  Isaac  W.  Smith,  Supreme  Court  of  New  Hampshire. 

Hon.  Lewis  W.  Clark,  Supreme  Court  of  New  Hampshire. 

Hon.  W.  H.  W.  Allen,  Supreme  Court  of  New  Hampshire. 

Hon.  Andrew  D.  White,  Ex-President  of  Cornell  University. 


Charles  Kknuali.  Adams,  Prtsidcnt  of  Cornell  University. 

Rev.  Israel  W.  Andrews,  President  of  Mariella  College. 

Ri;\'.  Henry  McCracken,  President  of  New  York  University. 

Charles  S.  Venahle,  University  of  Virginia. 

Rev.  Samuel  M.  Hamill,  D.D.,  President  of  New  Jersey  Historical  Society. 

Rt.  Rk.v.  Ozi  William  Whitakkr,  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania. 

Rr.  Rev.  Henkv  C.  Pditer,  Uishop  of  New  York. 

Most  Rev.  I'atrick  John  Rvan,  Archbishop  of  Philadelphia. 

Rev.  GEoRt;E  Uana  Boarhman,  D.I).,  Philadcl|)hia. 

Rev.  John  S.  Macintosh,  XJ.U.,  Philadelphia. 

Rev.  Thomas  F.  Davies,  D.P.,  Philadelphia. 

MoNciiKK  I).  CiiNWAV,  New  York. 

AiiKAllAM  jACulil,  M.IJ.,  New  York. 

Thomas  Addis  Emmet,  M.D.,  New  York. 

Cornelius  R.  Acinew,  M.1>.,  New  York. 

I-KNNo.'c  Browne,  M.1>.,  K.R.S.,  London. 

Fordvce  Barker,  M.I).,  New  York. 

T.  Vr  Valcoi'RT,  M.D.,  France. 

Sinclair  C<k;hill,  M.D.,  England. 

Benjamin  H.  Kidder,  Medical  Ins|>cctor,  U.S.N. 

Colonel  Georoe  H.  Wanino,  Georgia. 

Colonel  TnfxirxjRE  E.  Wiedersheim. 

Joseph  R.  Smith,  Surgeon  U.S.A. 

Hon.  John  S.  Wise,  Virginia. 

Hon.  Jamks  M.  Leach,  North  Carolina. 

Hon.  Henrv  M.  Hovt. 

Hon.  Andrew  G.  Curtin. 

Hon.  Lyman  K.  Bass,  New  York. 

Hon.  George  A.  Jenks,  Washington,  D.C. 

Hon.  James  P.  Kimkai.l,  W.tshington,  D.C. 

Hon.  Benjamin  Bi'tterworth,  Ohio. 

Hon.  William  Henry  Smith,  Chicago. 

Baron  Nicholas  Korkf,  St.  Petersburg. 

Hon.  William  S.  Kirkpatrick,  Pennsylvania. 

Hon.  Courtland  Parker,  New  Jersey. 

George  H.  Moore,  LL.D.,  New  York. 

Charles  J.  Bonaparte,  Baltimore. 

John  Lafarge,  New  York. 

Bernhard  Uhle,  Philadelphia. 

Peter  F.  Rothermel,  Philadelphia. 


Thomas  Hovendf.n.  Pennsylvania. 

rROKKSsoK  E.  Otis  Kf.ndau.,  rhiladclphia. 

Professor  FREDKRirK  A.  Gentii,  Pliilailelphia. 

Professor  Edward  K.  Perry,  Columbia  Collejje. 

THt)MAs  M.  Thompson,  Philadelphia. 

Richard  W.  Gii.der,  Editor  Century  Magazine. 

Hon.  Chari.ks  J.  Ciiai'MAN,  I'oiilaiid,  Maine. 

CiiARi.ia  I''.  Guild,  Paymaster  U.S.N. 

Jackson  McEi.mei.i.,  Chief-Engineer  I'.S.N. 

John  S.  .'\iihott,  Lieutenant  U..S.N. 

Joseph  Pulitzer,  New  York. 

R.  Alonzo  Brikjk,  Virginia. 

Caitain  James  Hkli,,  Yacht  Thistle. 

S.  C.  Eastman,  Vice-President  Historical  Society  of  New  Hampshire. 

GOVERNORS   OF  STATES. 
Hon.  Simon  P.  Hughes,  Arkansas. 
Hon.  Phineas  C.  Lounshury,  Connecticut. 
Hon.  Edward  A.  Perry,  Florida. 
Hon.  John  B.  Gordon,  Georgia. 
Hon.  William  Larrabee,  Iowa. 
Hon.  Joseph  R.  Bodwell,  Maine. 
Hon.  Charles  H.  Sawyer,  New  Hampshire. 
Hon.  Robert  S.  Grekn,  New  Jersey. 
Hon.  Alfred  M.  Scales,  North  Carolina. 
Hon.  Sylvester  Pennover,  Oregon. 
Hon.  James  A.  Beaver,  Pennsylvania. 
Hon.  John  W.  Davis,  Rhode  Island. 
Hon.  John  P.  Richardson,  South  Carolina. 
Hon.  Fitzhugh  Lee,  Virginia. 
Hon.  E.  Willis  Wilson,  West  Virginia. 

CENTENNIAL   COMMISSIONERS. 

Hon.  John  A.  Kasson,  President,  Iowa. 

Hon.  Amos  R.  Little,  Vice-President,  Pennsylvania. 

Hon.  Oscar  R.  Hindley,  Alabama. 

Hon.  Samuel  A.  Henzey,  Arizona. 

Hon.  Henry  C.  Robinson,  Connecticut. 

Hon.  John  H.  Rodney,  Delaware. 

Hon.  N.  G.  Ordway,  Dakota. 

2 


lO 

Hon.  Nelson  Tifft,  Georgia. 

Hon.  Charles  H.  Reevk,  Indiana. 

Hon.  Charles  E.  Fennkr,  Louisiana. 

Hon.  Clinton  P.  Paine,  Maryland. 

Hon.  Henry  Cabot  Iojdcie,  Massachusetts. 

Hon.  Alexanukk  Ramsey,  Minnesota. 

Hun.  Marckli.us  Green,  Mississippi. 

Hon.  Thomas  T.  Ganti',  Missouri. 

Hon.  Uenjamin  A.  Kimiiall,  New  Hampshire. 

Hon.  Charles  G.  Garrison,  New  Jersey. 

Hon.  William  A.  Rohertson,  Nelir-tska. 

Hon.  Lewin  W.  Barrinuer,  North  Carolina. 

Hon.  Alcred  T.  Goshorn,  Ohio. 

Hon.  Rowland  Hazard,  Rhode  Island. 

Hon.  James  A.  Hovt,  Souih  Carolina. 

Hon.  L.  E.  Chittenden,  Vermont. 

Hon.  William  Wirt  Henry,  Virginia. 

Hamiton  L.  Carson,  Secretary,  Pennsylvania. 

K.  C.  Brewster,  Jr.,  AaistatU  Secretary,  Pennsylvania. 

Tlic   following   nicmbcr.s  of  the  .societies  participating,  and 

their  friends,  were  al.so  present: 

Adler,  John  M.,  M.D.  Banks,  George  W. 

Agncw,  D.  Hayes,  M.D.  Barker,  Abraham. 

Allen,  Harrison,  M.D.  Barker,  Wharton. 

Allen,  Rol>ert  P.  Baugh,  Daniel. 

Allinson,  Edward  P.  Bausman,  J.  W.  B. 

Ashlmmcr,  C.  A.  Beaman,  Charles  C. 

Ashhurst,  Richard  L.  Beasley,  C.  Oscar. 

Ashman,  Hon.  Willian\  N.  Bclfielil,  T.  Brown. 

Bergner,  C.  W. 

Baeder,  Charles  B.  Biddle,  Alexander. 

Baily,  Joel  J.  Biddle,  Cadwalader. 

Baird,  John.  Biddle,  Thomas  A. 

Baird,  John  E.  Binder,  Jacob. 

Baird,  Thomas  E.  Bingham,  George  A. 

Baker,  Alfred  G.  Bispham,  George  Tucker. 

Baker,  William  de  Ford.  Blanchard,  William. 

Baker,  William  S.  Blankenburg,  Rudolph. 

Banes,  Charles  H.  Bodine,  Francis  L. 


II 


Ronnafitm,  F.  V. 
Bonwill,  W.  G.  A. 
Boy6,  Martin  H. 
Bradfonl,  T.  Hewsoii,  M.U. 
Brock,  Arthur. 
Brock.  Roliert  C.  H. 
Brockie,  William. 
Brooke,  Francis  M. 
Broomall,  John  M. 
Brown,  Alexander  P. 
Butltl,  Henry. 
Bullitt,  John  C. 

Cadwalader,  Charles  E.,  M.D. 
CadwaLader,  John. 
Caldwell,  Ste])hen  A. 
Cassidy,  Lewis  C. 
Calherwood,  J.  H. 
Catherwood,  H.  W. 
Cattell,  Henry  S. 
Cattell,  Rev.  William  C. 
Caven,  Joseph  L. 
Chi  Ids,  George  W. 
Clapp,  B.  Frank. 
Clark,  E.  W. 
Cleemann,  Richard  A. 
Coates,  Edward  H. 
Coates,  George  M. 
Coates,  William  M. 
Cochran,  Thomas. 
Cochran,  William. 
Cohen,  Charles  J. 
Cohen,  J.  Solis,  M.D. 
Coleman,  H.  T. 
Comegys,  B.  B. 
Cooper,  Thomas  V. 
,  Cox,  John  Bellangee. 
Coxe,  Brinton. 
Coxe,  Eckley  B. 
Coxc,  E<Uvin  T. 


Cramp,  Charles  H. 
Cramp,  Theodore. 
Cramp,  William  M. 
Cresson,  (Jeorge  V. 
Cruice,  Robert  H.,  M.D. 
Cummin,  H.  H. 
Cummins,  D.  B. 

Da  Costa,  J.  M.,  M.D. 
Darrach,  James,  M.D. 
Delamater,  G.  W. 
Delano,  Eugene. 
Dick,  Frank  M. 
Dickson,  Samuel. 
Disston,  Hamilton. 
Dixon,  Edwin  S. 
Dixon,  Samuel  G.,  M.D. 
Dolan,  Thomas. 
Donaldson,  Thomas. 
Dougherty,  James. 
Dreer,  Ferdinan<l  J. 
Drexel,  Anthony  J. 
Dudley,  Thomas  H. 
Dupont,  Henry  A. 

Edelheim,  Carl. 
Edmunds,  Henry  R. 
Egle,  William  Henry,  M.D. 
Eisenbrey,  Edwin  T. 
Ellison,  Rodman  B, 
Elwell,  Isaac. 
Embick,  Colonel  F.  E. 
Emery,  Titus  S. 

Faries,  Edgar  D. 
Farrelly,  Stephen. 
Fell,  John  R. 
Fields,  Charles  J. 
Fisher,  Ellicott. 
Fisher,  George  Harrison. 


12 


Fisher,  Henry  M.,  M.I). 
Killer,  Edwin  H. 
Fotterall,  Stephen  B. 
Fox,  Daniel  M. 
Fox,  George  S. 
Fraley,  Frederick. 
French,  H.  B. 
Friesen,  Baron,  Oldenburg. 

Garrison,  Abraham. 
CJibbs,  W.  W. 
Gibson,  Henry  C. 
Gillingham,  Joseph  E. 
Goodell,  C.  William,  M.D. 
Goodman,  H.  Ernst,  M.D. 
Goodwin,  William  W. 
Graff,  Frederick. 
Gray,  Henry  W. 
Cirey,  Samuel  H. 
Griscom,  Clement  A. 
Griscom,  W.  W. 
Gros.s,  A.  Hallcr. 
Grove,  J.  H.,  M.D. 

Haldeman,  George  W. 
Hale,  John  Mills. 
Hall,  Au)>ustus  R. 
Hallowell,  Frederick  Fraley. 
Handy,  Moses  P. 
Hargraves,  W.  H.  C. 
Harrah,  Charles  J. 
Harris,  Joseph  S. 
Harrison,  Alfred  C. 
Harrison,  Charles  C. 
Hart,  Charles. 
Hart,  Charles  Henry. 
Haydon,  James  C. 
Helme,  Willi.am. 
llensel,  W.  U. 
HiUleburn,  Charles  R. 


Hill,  R.  n.  C. 
Ilollingsworth,  Samuel  S. 
Horner,  William  Macpherson. 
Horstmann,  Walter. 
Houston,  Edwin  J. 
Houston,  Henry  H. 
H<iuston,  Samuel  F. 
Houston,  William  C,  Jr. 
Howe,  H.  M.,  M.D. 
Hutton,  Addison. 

Ingham,  William  A. 

Jayne,  Eben  C. 
Jayne,  Horace. 
Jefleris,  W.  W. 
Jone«,  B.  F. 
Jones,  Horatio  Gates. 
Jones,  J.  Levering. 
Jordan,  John  W. 

Kacrcher,  George  R. 
Keen,  Gregory  B. 
Keini,  George  De  H. 
Kcim,  Henry  M. 
Kelley,  William  D. 
Kennedy,  Elias  D. 
K<«g,  Charles  R. 
Klolz,  Roliert. 
Knight,  Edward  C. 

LaLanne,  Frank  D. 
Lamliert,  William  H. 
Leach,  J.  Granville. 
Lewis,  Saunders. 
Lichtcnstadter,  Samuel. 
Lii>pincott,  J.  Dundas. 
Little,  Amos  R. 
Lockwood,  E.  Dunbar. 
Longslrcth,  Edwar.l. 


13 


I,U(lIow,  J.  I..,  M.D. 

McClure,  Alcxamk'r  K. 
Mcllhenny,  John. 
McKeaii,  Thomas. 
McKean,  William  V. 
McMichacl,  Morton. 
McMurtrie,  Richard  C. 
MacAlister,  James. 
Macfarlane,  John  J. 
Mackellar,  Thomas. 
Meade,  George. 
Meehan,  Thomas. 
Meigs,  William  M. 
Meredith,  William  M. 
Miles,  Thomas  J. 
Miller,  Andrew  H. 
Miller,  Edgar  G. 
Miller,  J.  Rulon. 
Mitchell,  J.imes  T. 
Mitchell,  S.  Weir,  M.D. 
Montgomery,  Thomas  H. 
Morris,  John  T. 
Munday,  Eugene  H. 

Norris,  Isaac. 
North,  H.  M. 

Oberrender,  E.  A. 
Opdyke,  B.  P. 
Ostheimer,  Alfred  J. 

Packard,  John  H.,  M.D. 
Page,  S.  Davis. 
Pancoast,  William  H. 
Parrish,  Joseph. 
Parsons,  James. 
Parvin,  Theophilus,  M.D. 
Patterson,  Joseph. 
Pennypacker,  Samuel  W. 


Penrose,  Clement  B. 
Pepper,  (Jeorge  S. 
Pep|H'r,  William,  M.D. 
Perot,  T.  Morris. 
Pollock,  James.      _ 
Potter,  Beverly  K. 
Potter,  Thomas,  Jr. 
Potter,  W.  Uubley. 
Potts,  Francis  L. 
Potts,  Joseph  D. 
Potts,  William  M. 
Pratt,  D.  T. 
Pri^ce,  J.  Sergeant. 
Prichard,  Frank  P. 

Rand,  Theodore  D. 
Rawie,  William  Brooke. 
Rawie,  Willi.am  Henry. 
Reakirt,  E<lwin  I.. 
Redner,  Lewis  H. 
Reed,  Henry. 
Reeves,  Francis  B. 
Remak,  Stephen  S. 
Rex,  Waller  E. 
Reyburn,  W.  S. 
Rhawn,  William  H. 
Riche,  George  Inman. 
Ricketson,  John  H. 
Riter,  Frank  M. 
Roberts,  Charles. 
Roberts,  Edward,  Jr. 
Roberts,  George  B. 
Roberts,  Percival. 
Robinson,  E.  R. 
Rogers,  John  I. 

Samuel,  John. 
Santee,  Charles. 
Sayre,  Robert  H. 
Schaffer,  Charles,  M.D. 


14 


Schellenberger,  J.  Monroe. 
Scott,  John  M. 
Scott,  Lewis  A. 
Sellers,  William. 
Shapley,  Rufus  E. 
Shipley,  Samuel  R. 
Shipper!,  F.dward. 
Shorlridge,  N.  Parker. 
Singerly,  William  M. 
Sinnod,  Joseph  K. 
Smedley,  Samuel  L. 
Smith,  Charles. 
Smith,  Charles  Emory. 
Smith,  I).  Wh.irlon. 
Smith,  Uselma  C. 
Smyth,  Lindley. 
Siiowden,  A.  Louden. 
Snowden,  George  R. 
Sparhawk,  John,  Jr. 
Staake,  William  H. 
Starr,  Louis,  M.D. 
Steel,  Edward  T. 
Slilli,  Chiirles  J. 
Stokes,  E.  D. 
Stone,  Charles  W. 
Stone,  Frederick  D. 
Strawbridge,  William  C. 
Supplee,  J.  Wesley. 
Sutter,  Daniel. 

Tatham,  William  P. 
Taylor,  Lewis  H.,  Jr. 
Thomas,  Charles  H.,  M.D. 
Thomas,  Samuel  Hinds. 
Thomas,  William  G. 
Thompson,  John  J. 
Thomson,  Willijim,  M.D. 


Tobias,  Joseph  F. 
Trotter,  Charles  W. 
Tyler,  Sidney  F. 

Valentine,  John  K. 

Wallace,  William  A. 
Warwick,  Charles  F. 
Watkins,  Samuel  P. 
Weidman,  Grant. 
Wells,  Calvin. 
Welsh,  Henry  D. 
Wetlierill,  John  Price. 
Wheeler,  Andrew. 
Wheeler,  Joseph  K. 
Whelcn,  Edward  S. 
Whclen,  Henry,  Jr. 
Williams,  Charles. 
Williams,  Edward  H. 
Wilson,  Albert  Lapslcy. 
Wilson,  Ellwood,  M.D. 
Wilson,  John  A. 
Wilson,  Joseph  M. 
Winship,  Richard  C. 
Wister,  Avcn  J.,  M.D. 
Wister,  W.  Rotch. 
Wi-ster,  Owen  J.,  M.D. 
Wood,  Alan,  Jr. 
Wood,  George. 
Wood,  R.  Francis. 
Wood,  Stuart. 
Wood,  Walter. 

Yarnall,  Francis  C. 
Yates,  David  G. 

Ziegler,  Henry  Z. 


<l  INI 


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The  Academy  was  tastefully  and  appropriately  decorated. 
Over  the  back  part  of  the  stage  was  a  large  scroll  made  (jf 
flowers  bearing  the  motto  of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania, — 
"  Virtue,  Liberty,  and  Independence."  Suspended  under  the 
middle  word  was  a  representation  in  evergreens  of  the  Liberty 
Bell.  The  seats  of  the  parquet  circle  were  hid  from  view  by 
a  thick  screen  of  evergreens,  palms,  and  flowers,  reaching  to 
the  floor  of  the  balcony  above.  Upon  the  .stage  appeared  a 
forest  .scene.  Tropical  plants  filled  every  available  .space, 
giving  a  uniform  appearance  to  the  whole  surroundings.  A 
carpeted  floor  one  hundred  and  forty-two  feet  in  length 
covered  the  parquet  and  stage,  and  on  it  sixteen  tables  were 
arranged  as  shown  in  the  accompanying  plan.  An  orchestra 
of  forty  pieces  was  placed  in  the  parquet  circle.  Covers  were 
laid  for  five  hundred  guests. 

Probably  never  before  had  so  distinguished  a  company  been 
assembled  at  a  banquet  in  America. 

The  Chairman  of  the  Committee,  Provost  Pepper,  presided, 
with  President  Cleveland  on  his  right  and  Ex-President 
Hayes  on  his  left.  At  the  same  table  places  were  assigned  to 
Secretary  Bavard,  George  W.  Childs,  Secretary  Fairchild, 
Edward  C.  Knight,  Ex-Vice-President  Hannibal  Hamlin, 
Joseph  Patterson,  Henry  M.  Hoyt,  Frederick  Fraley, 
John  Jav,  Alexander  Biddle,  Charles  Francis  Adams, 
William  S.  Baker,  Hon.  Carl  Schurz,  and  William  Sellers. 

The  Judiciary  Table  was  presided  over  by  Richard  C. 
McMurtrie,  with  Chief-Justice  Waite  on  his  right;  the  Con- 
gressional Table,  by  Hon.  William  D.  Kelley,  with  Senator 
Ingalls  on  his  right ;  the  Army  and  Navy  Table,  by  General 
John  F.  Hartranft,  with  General  Sheridan  and  Rear-Ad- 
miral Luce  on  his  right  and  left  respectively ;  the  Foreign 
Table,  by  Wharton  Barker;  the  Municipal  Table,  by  Hon. 
Edwin  H.  Fitler,  with  Hon.  Charles  J.  Chapman,  Mayor 


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3 


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of  Portland,  Maine,  on  his  right;  the  Gm'cniors'  Tabic,  by 
Hon.  James  A.  Beaver,  on  his  right  Governor  Fitzhugh  R. 
Lee,  of  Virginia ;  the  Centennial  Commission  Table,  by  Amos 
Little,  Esq.,  on  his  right  Hon.  John  A.  Kasson,  President 
of  Centennial  Commission. 

The  menu  was  printed  on  six  slieets  of  Holland  and  India 
papers  ornamented  with  etched  designs  emblematic  of  the 
occasion  and  of  the  objects  of  the  Societies  giving  the  banquet. 
Impressions  from  the  original  plates  accompany  this  description. 

While  the  banquet  was  in  progre.ss  a  reception  was  being 
given  to  Mrs.  Cleveland  in  the  Foyer  by  the  ladies  of  Phila- 
delphia.   The  committee  in  charge  was  composed  of — 

Mrs.  J.  DuNDAs  LlPiMNCOTT.  Mrs.  Frank  M.  Dick. 

Mrs.  Edwin  H.  Fitler.  Mrs.  Henrv  Whei-EN,  Jr. 

Mrs.  Chaki.es  Henrv  Hart.  Mrs.  Clarence  H.  Clark. 

Mrs.  Samuel  Dickson.  Mrs.  A.  Louden  Snowden. 

Mrs.  Thomas  M.  Thomi-son.  Mrs.  Louis  Starr. 

Mrs.  R.  L.  AsHHURST.  Mrs.  William  Pepi-er. 

Mrs.  George  W.  Childs.  Mrs.  C.  H.  C.  Brock. 

Mrs.  J.  Granville  Leach.  Mrs.  George  Meade. 

Mrs.  George  Harrison  Fisher.  Mrs.  Charles  C.  Harrison. 

Mrs.  Amos  R.  Little.  Mrs.  Charles  H.  Banes. 

Mrs.  E.  D.  Gillespie.  Mrs.  William  Sellers. 

Mrs.  Morton  McMichael.  Mrs.  Henry  C.  Gibson. 

Mrs.  George  B.  Roberts. 

At  half-past  eight  o'clock  Mrs.  Cleveland,  accompanied  by 
Mrs.  Waite,  wife  of  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  United  States ; 
Mrs.  Miller,  wife  of  Justice  Miller  of  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court;  Mrs.  General  Sheridan,  Mrs.  Daniel  C. 
Lamont,  and  Mrs.  J.  Dundas  Lippincott,  entered  the  balcony 
box  on  the  south  side  of  the  Academy.  The  doors  of  the 
balcony  were  then  thrown  open  for  the  entrance  of  the  ladies 
who  had  received  invitations,  and  in  a  few  minutes  nearly 
every  seat  was  occupied. 


r 


proem 


» 


The  convention  of  delegates 
from  the  thirteen  original  states, 
appointed    for   the    purpose    of 
"revising,  amending,  and  alter- 
ing  the   Federal    Government," 
met  in  the  State  House,  at  Phil- 
adelphia, on  the  25th  day  of  May, 
1787,  and  upon  the  motion  of 
Robert  Morris,  George  Washington  was 
unanimously  chosen  President  of  the  convention. 
The  deliberations  of  the  body  were  continued 
until  the   17th  day  of  September,  when   the 
delegates  "  met  in  Convention  and  signed  the 
proceedings,"  which  provided  for  the  United 
States  a  fundamental  law  for  its  governance ; 
after  which  they  dined  together  at  the  City 
Tavern.     At  the  close  of  a  century  from 
that  day  to  appropriately  terminate  the 
commemorative  services  we  meet  and 
dine  together  here. 


'^^^ 


/^"^. 


Menu. 


y.  Points. 


Oreen  Turtle. 


Ckateam  Y^utm. 
AmoniiltaJo. 


MON,  Oyster  Crab  Sauce.      Uth/raHmii  '■ 

JTATOES.  Cucumbers. 


h 


Chicken  Cutlets. 


/      Filet  of  Beef  with  Olives. 
Potato  Croquettes.    Green  Peas. 
Mashed  Sweet  Potatoes. 


Sorbet. 


Terrapin. 


Reed  Birds. 


Veuve  Oi^uoi. 
L,  Roederer  Grand  Vin  Sec. 

Pommery  Sec. 

Jaunay  Sec. 

Cieiler  &•  Co.,  Blue  Seal. 

Delbeck. 


Chaieau  La/itte. 
Clot  da  Vougeot. 


LErrucE.  Sliced  Tomatoes. 

Mayonnaise  and  French  Dressing. 


Roquefort.  GRUYfeRE. 

Ices. 


Madeira  t  'j^, 

Gorgonzola.  Brie. 

Fruits.  ^ 


Cognac,  l&is. 


Tf  oasts. 


1.  The  President  of  the  United  States. 

Okovbr  Clrvbland, 

President  of  the  United  States. 

2.  The  Federal  Judiciary,     .  Stanley  Matthuw-s. 

Associate  Justice  Supreme  Court,  U.  S. 


3.  Congress 

4.  The  United  States  of  1787. 
(P  The  United  States  of  1887. 

6.  The  Army 

7.  The  Navy.       .        .        .  '     . 


9.  France— Our  Old  Ally. 

10.  American  Education. 

11.  Tni^  Centennial  Commission. 


John  Jamks  Inualls, 

President  of  the  Senate. 

FiTzHUGH  Lee, 

Governor  of  Virginia. 

Charlbs  Francis  Adams, 

of  Massachusetts. 

Philip  H.  Shrkioan, 

Lieutcnant-General  U.  S.  Army. 

Stbphbn  B.  Lucb, 

Rear  Admual  U.  S.  Navy. 

8.  England— Our  Mother  Country,  sir  Lyon  Plavfair. 

of  Great  Britain. 

Marquis  Dk  Chambritn, 

of  France. 

Andrew  D.  White,  of  New  York. 
John  A.  Kasson,  President. 


12.  Honor  and  Immortality  to  the  Members 
i)F  THE  Federal  Convention  of  1787. 

USNRY  M.  HovT,  o£.*ena»5fl/ani:i 


■TK^A 


•'-^r^' 


Committee  of 

Arrangements.        , 

William  Pepper,  M.D.,  • 
Provost  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania) 
Chairman. 

Frederick  Fraley,  ;_. 

President  of  the  American  Philosophical  Society. 

S.  Weir  Mitchell,  M.D., 
President  of  the  College  of  Physicians  of  Philadelphia. 

Isaac  Elwell, 
President  of  the  Law  Academy  of  Philailcipl^^iMi  v  , 
Brinton  Coxe,  c 

osident  of  the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvatiia.  "\^ 

Joseph  M.  Wilson, 

"['resident  of  the  Franklin  Institute  of  the  State 

of  Pennsylvania. 

George  S.  Pepper, 
President  of  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  the  Fine  Arts. 

Joseph  Leidy,  M.D., 
President  of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  of  Philadelphia. 


Charles  C.  Harrison, 
Samuel  Dickson, 
.Samuel  W.  Pennypacker, 
Cadwalader  Uiddle, 
William  A.  Ingham, 
John  Ashhurst,  Jr.,  M.D., 


George  DeB.  Keim, 
Edwin  T.  Eisknhrey, 
William  Sellers, 
William  P.  Tatham, 
Charles  Henry  Hart, 
Henry  Whelen,  Jr., 


Richard  A.  Cleemann,  M.D.,  John  H.  Packard,  M.D 
J.  Granville  Leach,  Thomas  Meehan, 

Richard  C.  McMurtrie,         Jacob  Binder, 
William  Henry  Rawle,         Theodore  D.  Rand, 


Wharton  Barker, 

Treasurer. 


Fred.  D.  Stone, 

Secretary, 


TOASTS  AND  SPEECHES. 


At  nine  o'clock  Provost  Pepper  arose  and  said, — 

"  In  Washington's  Diary,  as  quoted  in  the  Pennsylvania 
Magazine,  the  following  entry  occurs  for  Monday,  September 
•  7.  i?'^?'-  'Met  in  convention  when  the  Constitution  received 
the  unanimous  assent  of  eleven  States  and  of  Colonel  Hamil- 
ton, of  New  York,  the  only  delegate  from  thence  in  Conven- 
tion, and  was  subscribed  to  by  every  member  present  except 
Governor  Randolph  and  Colonel  Mason  from  Virginia,  and 
Mr.  Gerry  from  Massachusetts.  The  business  being  thus 
closed,  the  members  adjourned  to  the  City  Tavern,  dined 
together,  and  took  a  cordial  leave  of  each  other.  After  which 
I  returned  to  my  lodgings,  did  some  business  and  received  the 
papers  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Convention,  and  retired  to 
meditate  on  the  momentous  work  which  had  been  executed.' 

"  There  is  nothing  but  this  scant  record  of  that  meeting,  but 
of  the  men  who  sat  around  the  table  in  the  old  tavern  in  that 
old-time  Philadelphia  with  her  forty  thousand  people,  there  is 
much  written  on  the  pages  of  history ;  and  of  the  work  which 
they  had  that  day  completed  we  are  assembled,  after  the  lapse 
of  a  century,  to  testify  that,  judged  by  its  marvellous  results,  by 
the  loyal  and  unanimous  approval  of  America's  sixty  million 
citizens,  and  equally  by  the  opinion  of  the  wisest  of  other 
lands,  it  was  the  most  remarkable  work  produced  by  the 
human  intellect,  at  a  single  stroke,  so  to  speak,  in  its  applica- 
tion to  political  affairs. 

"  We  have  heard  this  morning  a  memorable  account  of  that 
great  document,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  from 
the  lips  of  one  who.se  place  is  with  the  very  foremost  of  its 

«9 


20 

expounders  and  supporters.  Created  by  an  overruling  spirit 
of  wisdom  from  the  mutual  antagonisms  of  conflicfing  inter- 
ests, it  has  maintained  an  equilibrium  among  the  mighty  bodies 
and  forces  subject  to  it,  like  that  of  the  solar  system,  whose 
countless  members  pursue  their  allotted  courses,  orb  within  orb, 
under  the  all-pervading  power  of  gravitation.  Many  of  the 
ceremonies  which  one  hundred  years  ago  formed  part  of  the 
celebration  of  the  success  of  the  Federal  Convention  of  1787 
have  been  reproduced  at  this  time.  But  it  is  not  merely  in 
imitation  of  the  dinner  to  which  I  have  alluded  that  a  number 
of  the  literary  and  scientific  bodies  of  Philadelphia  have  united 
in  extending  the  invitation  which  has  been  so  courteously  ac- 
cepted. 

"  In  the  name  of  these  societies,  the  organization  and  consti- 
tutions of  a  number  of  which  antedate  our  national  existence, 
I  extend  to  you  all,  representatives  of  all  departments  of  our 
national  and  local  governments,  of  our  own  and  of  the  sister 
States  in  this  Union,  and  of  the  greater  sisterhood  of  foreign 
Nations,  with  all  of  whom,  thank  God,  our  relations  are  and  bid 
fair  ever  to  be  friendly  and  cordial, — ^to  you  all  I  extend  a  hearty 
greeting. 

"  It  was  much  to  have  secured  for  a  nation,  liberty, — personal, 
political,  religious.  This  it  is  which  forms  the  essential  basis 
of  all  that  renders  life  most  precious.  But  scarcely  less  re- 
markable than  the  statesmanship  and  political  foresight  of  the 
men  who  founded  this  Government,  was  their  appreciation  of 
the  fact  that  for  national  progress  and  development,  for  stability 
of  government,  and,  most  of  all,  for  human  happiness,  there 
must  be  not  only  universal  liberty  but  universal  education,  and 
the  largest  encouragement  of  letters,  arts,  and  science. 

"  True  as  this  was  of  the  leading  men  of  other  States  and 
cities,  it  was  pre-eminently  true  of  those  of  Pennsylvania  and 
of  Philadelphia,  and  I  should  fail  in  my  loyal  duty  were  I  to 


21 

omit  mention  of  what  resulted  from  labors  of  such  men  as 
Rush  and  Morfjan  and  Cadwaiader  and  Hiddlc  and  Shippen 
and  Clymer  and  Morris  and,  above  all,  of  I'ranklin.  I  know 
that  our  friends  in  Massachusetts  claim  Franklin  as  an  illustri- 
ous Bostonian  who  passed  a  few  years  of  his  later  life  in  Phila- 
delphia. At  least  they  were  fruitful  years ;  and  those  of  us 
who  doubt  at  times  whether  the  individual  counts  for  much  in 
this  crowded  life  may  take  heart  on  seeing  what  this  one  man 
did.  Time  does  not  now  permit  even  a  bare  allusion  to  all  the 
institutions  he  organized,  among  them  to  the  Library  Company 
of  Philadelphia,  founded  in  1731,  the  first  public  library  in 
America;  to  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital,  founded  in  1755,  the 
oldest  on  this  continent. 

"  Of  those  societies  which  have  the  honor  of  being  your 
hosts  this  evening,  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  founded  in 
1749,  fifth  of  American  colleges  in  order  of  seniority,  looks  to 
him  as  its  founder;  the  American  Philosophical  Society  for 
Promoting  Useful  Knowledge,  by  far  the  earliest  of  its  kind  in 
this  country,  was  organized  by  him  in  1743,  and  was  the  direct 
outgrowth  of  the  Junto,  a  less  formal  society  started  by  him  in 
1727;  and  the  Franklin  In.stitute  for  the  Promotion  of  the 
Mechanic  Arts  was  organized  in  1824  by  men  thoroughly  im- 
bued with  the  spirit  of  Franklin,  and  by  them  was  named  in 
honor  of  the  great  philosopher.  It  may  truly  be  added,  that  by 
its  long  career  of  constantly  enlarging  usefulness,  and  by  the 
powerful  encouragement  it  has  given  to  scientific  education  and 
to  the  mechanic  arts,  it  has  indeed  reflected  honor  upon  him 
whose  name  it  bears. 

"  Of  the  record  of  the  work  done  by  the  American  Phil- 
osophical Society  during  the  first  century  of  its  existence,  its 
distinguished  librarian,  Professor  Lesley,  well  says,  '  It  is  not  so 
much  the  record  of  the  growth  of  an  American  society  as  a 
record  of  the  growth  of  society  in   America.'      The  potent 


22 

ideas  which  make  their  first  appearance  in  those  pages ;  the 
first  steps  in  far-reaching  scientific  paths  there  shown  ;  the  dis- 
tinguished names  from  all  sections  which  adorn  it,  indicate 
clearly  the  powerful  and  pervasive  influence  exerted  by  this 
venerable  society,  which  to-day,  as  at  all  times,  numbers  among 
its  members  the  leading  men  in  American  and  Kuropean 
science  and  letters. 

"  In  all  communities  where  artificial  conditions  do  not  inter- 
fere, a  prominent  part  is  played  in  public  and  in  social  life  by 
members  of  the  medical  and  legal  professions.  America  has 
been  no  e.Kception  to  this  rule,  and  nowhere  in  America  has 
the  organization  of  these  professions  been  so  good  and  their 
influence  so  potent  as  in  Philadelphia. 

"  In  the  early  part  of  this  year  was  celebrated  fitly  the  cen- 
tennial anniversary  of  the  College  of  Physicians  of  this  city, 
the  oldest  medical  society  in  America,  except  the  State  medi- 
cal organizations  of  New  Jersey  and  Massachusetts.  Housed 
in  a  building  comporting  with  her  dignity,  richly  endowed  with 
funds,  and  with  collections  surpassed  only  by  those  of  our 
Government,  and,  above  all,  with  the  traditions  of  a  century  of 
duty  faithfully  done,  of  the  highest  standard  of  private  and 
public  professional  work  steadily  maintained,  and  of  a  hundred 
years  without  one  break  in  the  meetings  for  scientific  work 
save  when  pestilence  thrust  upon  her  members  a  more  impera- 
tive service,  this  venerable  society  holds  up  before  the  medical 
world  of  to-day  the  example  of  her  founders  for  gratitude  and 
emulation. 

"  I  know  that  not  a  few  of  those  whom  I  have  the  honor  of 
welcoming  this  evening  were  yesterday  the  guests  of  the  Bar 
Association ;  and  I  am  assured  that  this  interesting  occasion 
was  not  allowed  to  pass  without  an  eloquent  account  of  the 
elder  sister  society,  the  Law  Academy ;  for  whether  we  assume 
1783,  the  date  of  the  earliest  steps  in  the  direction  of  this 


23 

organization,  or  1823,  the  year  of  actual  incorporation,  as  its 
starting-point,  it  may  fairly  be  claimed  to  have  exerted  through- 
out these  long  years  a  constant  and  powerful  influence  upon 
the  improvement  of  legal  education,  and  upon  the  maintenance 
of  that  lofty  standard  of  professional  feeling  and  conduct  which 
is  the  just  pride  of  our  bar. 

"  Has  not  already  enough  been  said  to  establish  the  fact  that, 
under  our  democratic  form  of  government,  institutions  of  the 
most  varied  kinds  may  develop  and  thrive  as  vigorously  as 
though  fostered  by  royalty's  most  lavish  favor  ?  Nay,  will  not 
one  who  looks  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  this  land  and 
notes  the  growing  strength  and  numbers  of  these  institutions, 
with  their  magnificent  endowment  and  equipment,  be  led  to 
conclude  that  a  consciousness  that  such  foundations  are  need- 
ful for  the  stability  as  well  as  for  the  grace  of  the  social  fabric 
in  this  country  is  rapidly  developing  the  deliberate  purpose, 
among  those  intrusted  with  large  wealth,  of  devoting  much  of 
it  to  such  enduring  monuments  ?  Here  in  this  city  stand  the 
Academy  of  Natural  Sciences,  founded  in  181 2,  within  whose 
walls  are  garnered  the  constantly  increasing  and  well-nigh 
priceless  collections  from  all  quarters  of  the  globe ;  and  the 
Academy  of  Fine  Arts,  founded  in  1805,  the  first  art  academy 
in  America,  whose  vigorous  work,  with  that  of  her  sister 
academies,  is  rapidly  developing  a  genuine  school  of  American 
art.  For,  if  true  art  requires  for  its  growth  an  impressionable 
and  imaginative  race,  with  an  heroic  and  picturesque  history,  in 
contact  with  an  environment  of  natural  beauty  marvellous  in 
variety  and  perfection,  and  under  the  influence  of  lofty  ideals 
of  personal  and  national  duty,  it  were  strange  if  in  the  glorious 
Augustan  age  on  which  America  is  entering  there  should  not 
develop  a  school  of  art  whose  splendor  shall  outshine  the  lustre 
of  our  more  material  achievements. 

"  Even  now  our  active  workers  are  gathering  in  the  records 


24 

of  the  early  life  of  this  country.  Within  the  stately  rooms  of 
our  own  Historical  Society,  founded  in  1824,  where,  under  the 
influence  of  the  new  quickening  and  reviving  of  all  intellectual 
movements,  there  is  marvellous  activity  in  collection  and  re- 
search, are  rapidly  accumulating  the  materials  for  many  a 
thrilling  romance  or  moving  ballad  or  impassioned  canvas. 
Nor  is  it  the  least  important  feature  of  this  grand  growth  that, 
although  originating  independently  yet  from  a  common 
thought,  these  various  institutions,  both  here  and  elsewhere, 
are  working  in  concert  for  the  higher  education  of  the  people, 
and  are  lending  their  powerful  aid  towards  the  extension 
of  the  scope  and  influence  of  our  great  university  .system. 
The  American  university  is  the  university  of  the  people,  not 
of  a  class.  There  is  no  fear  of  too  much  nor  of  too  high 
education  in  this  country.  He  who  pursues  the  humblest 
calling  will  pursue  it  the  more  contentedly  because  he  has 
some  .sources  of  consolation  within  himself  And  to  all  with 
the  natural  ability  and  with  the  energy  to  use  it  mu.st  the  road 
be  open,  clear  and  straight,  to  the  highest  education,  which 
being  sound  and  thorough  will  develop  all  that  is  good  and 
great  in  each,  and  will  fit  him  for  the  highest  usefulness  and 
success. 

"  I  stand  here  by  the  accident  of  my  official  relation  to  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  it  were  impossible  to  mention 
the  name  of  this  institution  without  testifying  again  to  the 
wisdom  and  the  devotion  and  the  .self-sacrifice  of  those  who 
founded  her,  and  of  tho.se  who  through  nearly  a  century  and 
a  half  have  labored  to  promote  her  welfare,  until  she  stands 
to-day  the  intellectual  centre  of  this  vast  community,  beloved 
and  honored  on  account  of  her  earnest  labors  in  the  cause  of 
truth  and  sound  learning,  served  gladly  and  zealously  by  the 
wise  and  learned  in  all  her  departments,  and  supported  by  the 
generous  devotion  of  thousands  of  her  children  who  in  all 


25 

lands  on  which  the  sun  shines  are  holding  her  in  lo%'ing  re- 
membrance for  the  happiness  and  the  help  she  gave  them. 

"  It  is  by  such  hosts,  Mr.  President  and  gentlemen  who  are 
now  the  honored  guests  of  Philadelphia  and  of  Pennsylvania, 
that  you  are  welcomed  here  to-night.  And  if  in  this  one  city, 
illustrious  though  it  be,  there  stands  such  an  array  of  organ- 
ized powers  co-operating  as  willing  servants  with  the  vast 
spiritual  forces  of  our  American  churches,  and  with  the  great 
silent  influence  of  our  Constitution  and  our  political  institu- 
tions, for  the  diffusion  of  truth  and  the  elevation  of  society, 
surely  we  must,  when  we  recall  that  in  every  centre  and  every 
corner  of  this  continent  there  are  similar  agencies  at  work, 
look  forward  with  confidence  to  the  future. 

"  Can  earth  hold  in  store  for  any  man  greater  honor  than  to 
be  called — the  elect  of  such  a  nation — to  the  post  of  highest 
authority  over  it?  Of  the  dignity  of  this  office,  of  the  tre- 
mendous power  and  responsibility  devolving  on  him  who 
assumes  it,  it  were  impossible  for  me  to  speak  adequately. 
And  equally  so  were  it  to  depict  the  dignified  yet  reverent 
homage  which  is  paid  by  this  vast  people  to  their  uncrowned 
king, — when  seen  to  wear  the  purple  robe  of  authority  un- 
stained by  partisan  or  personal  purpose.  But  we  arc  honored 
to-night  by  the  presence  of  him  who  now,  and  with  not  un- 
equal strength,  holds  this  lofty  place,  and  it  is  from  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  that  we  beg  to  hear  in  response  to  the 
toast  to  his  high  office." 

"The  President  of  the  United  States." 

"  On  such  a  day  as  this,"  responded  President  Cleveland, 
"  and  in  the  atmosphere  that  now  surrounds  him,  I  feel  that  the 
President  of  the  United  States  should  be  thoughtfully  modest 
and  humble.  The  great  office  he  occupies  stands  to-day  in  the 
presence  of  its  maker ;  and  it  is  especially  fitting  for  this  servant 

4 


26 

of  the  people  and  creature  of  the  Constitution,  amid  the  im- 
pressive scenes  of  this  centennial  occasion,  by  a  rigid  self- 
examination,  to  be  assured  concerning  his  loyalty  and  obedi- 
ence to  the  law  of  his  existence.  He  will  find  that  the  rules 
prescribed  for  his  guidance  require  for  the  performance  of  his 
duty,  not  the  intellect  or  attainments  which  would  raise  him  far 
above  the  feeling  and  sentiment  of  the  plain  people  of  the  land, 
but  rather  such  a  knowledge  of  their  condition  and  sympathy 
with  their  wants  and  needs  as  will  bring  him  near  to  them. 
[Applau.se.]  And  though  he  may  be  almost  appalled  by  the 
weight  of  his  responsibility  and  the  solemnity  of  his  situation, 
he  cannot  fail  to  find  comfort  and  encouragement  in  the  success 
the  fathers  of  the  Constitution  wrought  from  their  simple 
patriotic  devotion  to  the  rights  and  interests  of  the  people. 
/  Surely  he  may  hope  that,  if  reverently  invoked,  the  spirit 
which  gave  the  Constitution  life  will  be  sufficient  for  its  success- 
ful operation  and  the  accomplishment  of  its  beneficent  pur- 
poses. 

"  Because  they  are  brought  nearest  to  the  events  and  scenes 
which  marked  the  birth  of  American  institutions,  the  people 
of  Philadelphia  should  of  all  our  citizens  be  most  imbued  with 
.sentiments  of  the  broadest  patriotism.  The  first  Continental 
Congress  and  the  Constitutional  Convention  met  here,  and 
Philadelphia  still  has  in  her  keeping  Carpenters'  Hall,  Inde- 
pendence Hall  and  its  bell,  and  the  grave  of  I'ranklin. 

"  As  I  look  about  me  and  see  here  represented  the  societies 
that  express  so  largely  the  culture  of  Philadelphia,  its  love  of 
art,  its  devotion  to  science,  its  regard  for  the  broadest  knowl- 
edge, and  its  studious  care  for  historical  research, — societies 
some  of  which  antedate  the  Constitution, — I  feel  that  I  am  in 
a  notable  company.  To  you  is  given  the  duty  of  preserving 
and  protecting  for  your  city,  for  all  your  fellow-countrymen, 
and  for  mankind,  the  traditions  and  the  incidents  related  to  the 


27 

establishment  of  the  freest  and  best  government  ever  vouch- 
safed to  man.  [Applause.]  It  is  a  sacred  trust;  and  as  time 
leads  our  government  further  and  further  from  the  date  of  its 
birth,  may  you  solemnly  remember  that  a  nation  exacts  of  you 
that  these  traditions  and  incidents  shall  never  be  tarnished  nor 
neglected ;  but  that,  brightly  burnished,  they  may  always  be 
held  aloft,  fastening  the  gaze  of  a  patriotic  people  and  keeping 
alive  their  love  and  reverence  for  the  Constitution."  [Long  and 
continued  applause.] 

In  proposing  the  next  toast,  "  To  the  Federal  Judiciary," 
Dr.  Pepper  said, — 

"  While  the  eloquent  and  forcible  words  of  the  distinguished 
orator  of  to-day  are  still  ringing  in  our  ears,  and  while  we 
retain  fresh  and  unimpaired  the  impression  of  the  splendid 
demonstration  he  gave  us  of  the  powers  and  virtues  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  it  is  fitting  that  we  should 
pay  our  tribute  of  respect  to  that  body  of  men  to  whom  in  an 
especial  sense  is  intrusted  the  interpretation,  the  custody,  and 
the  maintenance  of  that  immortal  document.  I  am  tempted  to 
quote  from  a  well-known  .speech  made  in  1805  by  Joseph  Hop- 
kinson,  a  member  and  a  Vice-Provost  of  our  Law  Academy, 
in  defence  of  a  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  on  his  impeach- 
ment before  the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  In  glowing 
sentences,  which  have  often  been  repeated,  he  enforces  the 
supreme  necessity  of  a  pure  and  upright  judiciary,  and  adds, 
'  If  I  am  called  upon  to  declare  whether  the  independence  of 
judges  were  more  essentially  important  in  a  monarchy  or  a 
republic,  I  should  say  in  the  latter.  ...  If  you  have  read  of 
the  death  of  Seneca,  under  the  ferocity  of  a  Nero,  you  have 
read,  too,  of  the  murder  of  Socrates,  under  the  delusions  of  a 
republic.  An  independent  and  firm  judiciary,  protected  and 
protecting  by  the  laws,  would  have  snatched  the  one  from  the 


28 

fury  of  a  despot,  and  preserved  the  other  from  the  madness  of 
a  people.' 

"  Have  we  not  seen  the  immortal  Marshall,  while  the  majesty 
of  law  seemed  heightened  by  the  simple  grandeur  of  his  char- 
acter, hold  with  true  and  level  hand  the  balance,  though  in 
one  scale  there  was  but  a  wretched  life,  and  in  the  other  the 
fury  and  hatred  of  a  nation?  Have  we  not  seen  the  august 
body  of  our  highest  court  plant  itself  upon  the  side  of  truth 
and  right  in  momentous  issues,  and  still  the  raging  of  the 
people  by  its  inflexible  and  incorruptible  strength  ? 

"  It  is  with  deep  veneration,  therefore,  that  I  propose  to  you 
the  toast  of  the  '  Federal  Judiciarv,'  whether  of  the  Supreme 
or  Circuit  Courts,  illustrious  for  learning,  integrity,  and  inde- 
pendence, and  call  upon  Mr.  Justice  Matthews,  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States,  to  respond." 

Justice  Matthews  said, — 

"  The  display  of  national  power  and  prosperity  witnessed 
by  the  three  days  now  fitly  closing ;  the  consciousness  of  the 
.strength  and  fulness  of  our  national  life,  now  swelling  in  the 
hearts  of  so  many  millions  of  freemen,  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  attest  the  wise  frame  of  our  civil  and  political  institu- 
tions. A  retrospect  of  a  hundred  years  enables  the  present 
generation  to  judge  how  far  the  work  of  our  fathers  has  ful- 
filled its  hope  and  promise.  The  organization,  function,  and 
development  of  the  judicial  power  of  the  United  States  under 
the  Federal  Constitution,  as  concerned  in  the  growth  of  our 
national  life,  is  the  subject  presented  to  you  by  the  sentiment  to 
which  I  respond. 

"A  judicial  establishment  was  essential  to  the  idea  of  a 
government  as  distinguished  from  a  league  or  confederacy.  A 
judicial  establishment  co-ordinate  with  and  independent  of  the 
legislative  and  executive  departments  was  essential  to  the  idea 


29 

of  a  government  intended  to  establish  justice  and  secure  the 
blessings  of  liberty.  For  the  very  definition  of  despotism  is 
the  concentration  of  power  in  a  single  will. 

"  It  was  necessary  that  two  other  constituents  should  enter 
into  its  organization.  The  Government  of  the  United  States 
was  to  be  autonomous,  self-maintaining,  .self-sufficient,  and  in- 
dependent of  the  separate  governments  of  the  several  States,  to 
which,  however,  and  to  the  people  of  the  States,  was  reserved 
all  powers  not  delegated,  cither  e.Kpressly  or  by  reasonable 
implication,  to  the  Government  of  the  United  States.  Hence  it 
was  declared  by  the  Constitution  that  the  judicial  power  of  the 
United  States  shall  extend  to  all  cases  in  law  or  equity  arising 
under  this  Constitution,  the  laws  of  the  United  States,  and 
treaties  made,  or  which  shall  be  made,  under  their  authority ; 
to  all  cases  affecting  ambassadors,  other  public  ministers,  and 
consuls ;  to  all  cases  of  admiralty  and  maritime  jurisdiction  ; 
to  controversies  to  which  the  United  States  shall  be  a  party ; 
to  controversies  between  two  or  more  States,  between  a  State 
and  citizens  of  another  State  (limited  by  the  Eleventh  Amend- 
ment to  ca.ses  where  the  State  is  the  plaintiff),  between  citizens 
of  different  States,  between  citizens  of  the  same  State  claiming 
lands  under  grants  of  different  States,  and  between  a  State,  or 
the  citizens  thereof,  and  foreign  .states,  citizens,  or  subjects. 

"  It  was  further  necessary  that  within  the  whole  area  of  this 
jurisdiction  the  judicial  power  of  the  United  States  should  be 
final,  and,  in  the  last  resort,  exclusive.  It  was  therefore  de- 
clared by  the  Constitution  that '  This  Constitution  and  the  laws 
of  the  United  States  which  shall  be  made  in  pursuance  thereof, 
and  all  treaties  made,  or  which  shall  be  made,  under  the 
authority  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  the  supreme  law  of  the 
land ;  and  the  judges  in  every  State  shall  be  bound  thereby, 
anything  in  the  Constitution  or  laws  of  any  State  to  the  con- 
trary notwithstanding.' 


30 

"Thus  was  cast  upon  tlie  Federal  Judiciary  the  burden  and 
the  duty,  in  the  due  course  of  judicial  determination  between 
litigant  parties,  of  enforcing  the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  even 
though  it  became  essential,  in  doing  so,  to  declare  void  acts  of 
Congress  and  of  the  legislatures  of  the  States.  This  is  the 
logical  necessity  of  liberty  secured  by  written  constitutions  of 
government  unalterable  by  ordinary  acts  of  legislation.  If  the 
prohibitions  and  limitation  of  the  charters  of  government  can- 
not be  enforced  in  favor  of  individual  rights,  by  the  judgments 
of  the  judicial  tribunals,  then  there  are  and  can  be  no  barriers 
again.st  the  exactions  and  despotism  of  arbitrary  power ;  then 
there  is  and  can  be  no  guarantee  or  security  for  the  rights  of 
life,  liberty,  or  property ;  then  everything  we  hold  to  be  dear  and 
sacred  as  personal  right  is  at  the  mercy  of  a  monarch  or 
a  mob. 

"  This  function,  it  will  be  observed,  is  judicial  as  distin- 
guished from  political.  The  judicial  power  does  not  act  as 
critic  or  censor  of  the  legislative  or  executive  departments  of 
cither  the  State  governments  or  of  the  Government  of  the 
United  States.  It  adjudges  only  between  parties  within  its 
jurisdiction  by  process  of  law,  and  what  it  declares  or  deter- 
mines as  to  the  validity  of  the  acts  of  other  departments  of 
government  is  collateral  and  incidental  only.  It  nevertheless 
binds  and  obliges  the  parties  to  the  judgment  and  furnishes  a 
precedent  for  subsequent  decisions  in  like  cases.  And  as  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  the  Constitution  and 
supreme  law  of  each  State,  so  the  courts  and  judges  of  the 
United  States  are  the  courts  and  judges  of  each  State  in  and 
for  which  they  may  be  sitting  to  hold  pleas ;  they  are  not  and 
ought  not  to  be  regarded  as  aliens  and  strangers,  administering 
a  foreign  and  hostile  jurisprudence.  The  law  they  declare 
and  admini.ster  in  every  ca.se  within  their  jurisdiction  is  as 
much  the  domestic  law  of  the  State  in  which  it  is  applied  as 


31 

though  it  derived  its  authority  solely  from  State  legislation 
and  was  adjudged  by  State  tribunals.  It  is  not  a  patriotic  part 
to  encourage  the  feeling  or  inculcate  the  opinion  that  the 
exercise  of  a  jurisdiction  under  the  laws  of  the  Union  is  an 
invasion  of  the  sphere  of  local  government,  or  to  diminish  the 
respect  duo  to  lawful  authority  by  the  prejudice  or  jealousy  of 
local  pride.     [Applau.se.] 

"  Although  the  Federal  Judiciary  are  invested  with  no  politi- 
cal power,  nevertheless  the  exercise  of  judicial  power  has 
neces.sarily  resulted  in  important  political  consequences.  In 
the  interpretation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and 
of  the  acts  of  Congress,  and  of  the  executive  departments,  and 
of  the  legislation  of  the  States,  while  prescribing  rules  for  the 
regulation  of  private  conduct,  the  courts  have  also  necessarily 
fixed  the  lines  of  public  law  along  and  within  which  official 
action  must  move  so  as  to  be  effective.  The  Federal  Judiciary, 
therefore,  has  been  a  prime  factor  in  the  political  education  of 
the  people  by  practical  exhibition  of  their  political  institutions 
in  actual  legal  operation  upon  their  affairs,  and  affecting  in  the 
most  important  particulars  their  interests  and  their  rights. 
The  plan  and  system  of  their  double  government  has  been 
taught  in  a  series  of  impressive  object-lessons,  establishing  the 
doctrine,  in  the  language  of  a  late  chief  ju.stice,  of  an  inde- 
structible Union  of  indestructible  States,  and  vindicating  the 
confidence  of  every  individual  in  the  protection  afforded  by 
the  law  of  the  land  against  arbitrary  power  of  government, 
whether  State  or  national,  seeking  to  deprive  him  of  life, 
liberty,  or  property. 

"With  what  success  the  Courts  of  the  United  States  have 
fulfilled  the  purposes  of  the  Constitution  is  recorded  in  the 
annals  of  the  century  which  closes  to-night.  It  is  to  be  found 
in  the  history  of  the  great  controversies  which  they  have 
settled  to  the  public  satisfaction,  and  in  the.  roll  of  great  names 


32 

made  famous  by  the  part  those  who  bore  them  have  taken  in 
their  decision.  They  are  too  many  to  be  enumerated  here 
now.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  judgments  in  which  that 
history  is  contained  form  a  body  of  jurisprudence,  which  for 
originality  and  scientific  accuracy  and  beauty  distinguishes 
American  con.stitutional  and  public  law  among  all  the  codes 
and  sy.stems  of  civilized  states,  while  no  name  of  higher  rank- 
has  been  given  to  the  jurisprudence  of  the  world  than  that 
of  John  Marshall.     [Applause.] 

"  How  it  may  be  in  the  future  the  future  must  be  left  to  tell. 
If  the  judges  of  to-day,  and  those  who  shall  come  after  them 
in  the  new  century  on  whose  threshold  we  now  .stand,  prove 
not  to  be  so  greatly  endowed  as  those  who  have  preceded 
them  in  those  days  when  there  were  giants,  nevertheless  their 
task  will  be  easier.  The  foundations  have  been  laid  well  and 
strong  and  deep.  The  plan  of  the  building  and  its  lines  are 
already  fixed  and  plain.  It  is  our  part,  and  the  part  of  those 
who  come  after,  to  build  on  this  foundation  according  to  this 
plan  and  within  these  lines.  We  have  but  to  follow  where 
others  have  led  and  pursue  the  ancient  ways. 

"  Mistakes  doubtless  will  be  made.  Errors  cannot  always 
be  avoided.  But  fortunately  they  are  not  irremediable  even 
when  committed  by  judicial  tribunals  of  last  resort.  There  is 
after  all  always  a  remaining  appeal.  For  it  is  only  what  is 
just  and  right  and  true  that  will  abide.  The  judgments  of  the 
Supreme  Court  are  constantly  reviewed  by  it.self  after  further 
enlightenment,  and  are  subject  always  to  the  ultimate  consen- 
sus of  professional  public  opinion  which  sooner  or  later  takes 
away  the  authority  of  every  bad  precedent.  The  law,  as  em- 
bodied in  judicial  decision,  is  a  progressive  and  not  a  fixed 
science.  It  takes  part  in  the  general  social  growth  and  keeps 
even  step  with  the  march  of  improvement  in  every  depart- 
ment of  life. 


33 

"  It  thus  vindicates  its  divine  origin  and  quality  by  meeting 
and  providing  for  every  human  need."     [Applause.] 

Dr.  Pepper  then  proposed  the  next  toast  in  the  following 
words : 

"  In  proposing  the  ne.xt  toast, — to  the  legislative  branch  of 
our  Government, — I  may  well  leave  to  the  honorable  and  elo- 
quent senator  who  will  reply  all  allusion  to  the  functions, 
powers,  and  privileges  of  this  enviable  body.  Truly  our  fore- 
fathers builded  even  better  than  they  knew  in  devising  our 
unique  system  of  representation.  E.xamples  in  abundance 
they  had  before  them  of  leagues  and  confederations.  But  at 
the  touch  of  time  and  practical  experience  they  had  all  fallen 
asunder.  Never  had  this  supreme  problem  of  statesmanship — 
the  mode  of  securing  the  permanent  union  of  many  separate 
and  independent  States  of  unequal  power — been  solved  until 
the  Federal  Convention  of  1787  devised  the  American  plan 
by  which  the  strong  is  strengthened,  but  its  power  of  aggres- 
sion is  curbed,  while  the  weak  is  made  strong  to  maintain 
its  equal  rights.  The  final  proof  of  the  success  of  this  plan 
is  that  despite  changes  and  vicissitudes,  greater  than  have 
befallen  any  nation  known  to  history  in  an  equal  period,  our 
Constitution  stands  practically  unchanged,  with  but  sixteen 
amendments  in  one  hundred  years. 

"  Point  me  to  a  single  system  of  government,  unless  v/e  go 
so  far  off  as  Russia  or  as  China,  in  which  it  can  be  said  that 
more  serious  and  radical  changes  have  not  been  made  during 
the  past  century  than  have  been  found  necessary  in  what  must 
have  seemed  a  wild  and  Utopian  scheme.  For  its  share  in  this 
grand  result  too  much  praise  cannot  be  awarded  to  Congress 
for  the  self-controlled  and  law-abiding  manner  in  which  have 
been  discharged  its  mighty  functions.  So  that  while  few  of 
us  seem  to  doubt  our  ability  to  become,  on  short  notice,  com- 

5 


34 

petent  members  of  that  august  body,  yet  all  will  unite  in  a 
hearty  recognition  of  the  high  standard  of  efficiency  and  prac- 
tical wisdom  maintained  by  it,  and  in  approving  the  toast  of 
'  The  Congress  of  the  United  States,'  to  which  I  shall  beg 
the  Hon.  J.  J.  Ingalls,  of  Kansas,  the  President  of  the  Senate, 
to  respond." 

Mr.  Ingali^  said, — 

"Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Philadelphia 
Societies: — I  rise  to  respond  to  this  sentiment  with  serious 
and  unaffected  embarrassment,  from  the  fact  that  the  honorable 
Provost  of  the  University  in  his  invitation  informed  me  that, 
in  consequence  of  the  great  number  of  speakers  and  the  length 
of  the  programme,  my  reply  should  be  limited  to  eight  or  ten 
minutes.  [Laughter.]  Those  who  are  familiar — as  I  presume 
most  of  you  arc — with  the  somewhat  prolix  and  loquacious 
verbosity  of  the  debates  in  Congress  will  appreciate  the  diffi- 
culty under  which  I  labor  [Laughter]  on  account  of  this 
restriction  and  limitation. 

"And  I  may  say  further,  at  the  outset,  that  I  should  fail  in 
the  discharge  of  my  duty  to  that  great  body  of  which  you 
have  designated  me  as  the  representative,  were  I  not  to  call 
the  attention  of  the  learned  and  distinguished  societies  of 
which  we  are  the  guests  to  the  fact  that  the  first  article  of  the 
Constitution  defines  the  powers  and  duties  of  Congress.  The 
second  article  describes  the  prerogatives  of  the  Executive,  and 
the  third  the  functions  of  the  Judiciary.  Our  hosts  in  the 
order  of  precedence  have  declared  that  the  first  shall  be  last, 
[laughter  and  applause.]  I  protest  against  this  violation  of 
the  great  charter  of  our  liberties,  and  serve  notice  upon  the 
Committee  of  Arrangements  that,  should  I  be  present  at  the 
next  Centennial,  I  shall  insist  upon  reversal  of  this  order,  and 
demand  for  Congress  its  constitutional  priority  in  the  festivities 


35 

of  the  day.  But  for  the  next  century  I  waive  the  question 
of  etiquette.     [Lau<jhter.] 

"  I  cannot  .suffer  thi.s  fortunate  occasion  to  pass  without  an 
expression  of  my  pride  and  gratification  at  the  unique  and  un- 
approachable completeness  and  perfection  of  the  ceremonies  of 
which  this  splendid  hour  is  the  fitting  crown  and  close.  There 
has  been  no  defect  in  design  or  detail.  Even  the  heavens  have 
.seemed  to  smile  upon  the  patriotic  undertaking,  and  earth  and 
sky  have  conspired  with  man  to  make  the  occasion  auspicious 
and  memorable  among  the  events  of  the  century.  Every  guest 
will  depart  with  a  deeper  sense  of  the  superb  hospitality  of 
Philadelphia, — already  proverbial, — and  with  a  profounder  ap- 
preciation of  the  glory  and  strength  and  grandeur  of  the 
Republic  of  which  we  are  all  proud  to  claim  that  we  are  citizens. 
[Applause.] 

"  Sir,  the  proceedings  we  have  witnessed  in  commemoration 
of  the  first  centennial  of  the  Constitution  have  not  been  merely 
a  painted  pageant  or  dramatic  spectacle.  Far  more  than  that. 
Though  the  pomp  and  splendor  of  the  stately  procession  have 
charmed  the  senses  with  music  and  color,  with  rhythmic  move- 
ment and  picturesque  tableaux,  contrasting  the  present  and  the 
past,  beneath  it  all  has  appeared  a  profound  intellectual  con- 
ception of  the  history  and  destiny  of  the  Republic ;  of  the 
ideas  which  are  the  basis  and  foundation  of  civil  liberty  and 
constitutional  government;  a  conception  wrought  out  with 
singular  strength  and  effectiveness,  which  reflect  great  honor 
upon  those  who  have  been  charged  with  the  accomplishment 
of  this  great  design.  What  might  have  degenerated  into  a 
mercenary  advertisement  or  an  empty  and  senseless  parade  has 
been  a  majestic  and  instructive  lesson  of  history,  an  inspiring 
and  irresistible  prophecy  of  our  coming  destiny. 

"  We  could  not  fail  to  learn,  from  the  demonstration  of  the 
results  of  our  experiment  in  popular  government,  that  the  Con- 


36 

stitution  was  made  for  the  people  and  not  the  people  for  the 
Constitution ;  and  that  there  is  no  rigid  and  fixed  formula  that 
can  be  applied  to  the  changing  processes  of  the  daily  life  of  a 
nation.  [Applause.]  Much  as  I  revere  the  Constitution  and 
the  wisdom  of  the  great  men  who  framed  it,  I  feel  that  there  is 
something  more  sacred  than  charters,  more  venerable  than  the 
Constitution,  and  that  is  the  rights  and  prerogatives  of  the 
people  which  it  was  ordained  to  establish  and  maintain. 

"The  Constitution  of  1787,  under  the  constructions  of  Con- 
gress and  the  decisions  of  the  courts,  is  widely  different  from 
the  Constitution  of  1887.  It  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  say 
that  we  could  not  have  survived  the  first  century  of  our  exist- 
ence under  a  strict  application  of  the  written  letter  of  the 
Constitution.  Its  most  remarkable  feature  is  its  elastic  flexi- 
bility and  its  latent  jicwer  through  which  it  has  been  enabled 
to  conform  to  the  necessities,  the  passions,  and  the  aspirations 
of  the  people. 

"  Without  entering  into  the  domain  of  politics,  I  doubt 
whether  the  Constitution  contains  any  definite  affirmative 
declaration  of  the  power  of  Congress  to  enact  a  protective 
tariff.  But  the  great  lesson  of  the  display  on  Thursday  was 
that  the  people  of  the  United  States  have  determined  to 
achieve  for  themselves,  and  those  who  come  after  them, 
absolute  industrial  independence.  [Applause.]  They  have 
resolved  that  they  will  make  for  themselves  whatever  they  eat 
or  drink  and  use  and  wear,  building  up  and  fortifying  the 
nation  with  intelligent  and  loyal  wage-workers,  whose  compen- 
sation shall  be  ample  and  adequate  to  secure  for  themselves  and 
their  families  the  blessings  of  education  and  the  opportunities 
for  happiness. 

"  I  am  not  sure  that  the  Constitution  has  delegated  to  Con- 
gress the  power  to  acquire  and  annex  territory  or  to  enlarge 
the  boundaries  of  the  Republic ;  but  in  addition  to  the  deter- 


37 

mination  to  secure  industrial  independence  has  been  that  kin- 
dred and  companion  passion  for  continental  unity.    [Applause.] 

"And  therefore,  although  the  Constitution  was  silent,  the 
people  purchased  Louisiana,  admitted  Texas,  and  have  ex- 
tended, through  the  diplomacy  of  the  predecessors  of  my  dis- 
tinguished friend  from  New  York,  who  sits  near  me,  our 
boundaries  to  the  Northwest  so  far  that  while  the  light  of  the 
morning  sun  gilds  the  rocky  headlands  of  Maine  its  parting 
rays  still  linger  upon  the  snowy  summits  of  the  mountains  of 
Alaska.  And  this  peaceful  conquest  will  proceed ;  this  pur- 
pose will  prevail.  I  doubt  not  that  when  the  next  centennial 
of  the  Constitution  is  celebrated,  in  this  place  and  at  this  anni- 
versary, it  will  be  celebrated  by  the  representatives  of  a  mighty, 
indissoluble,  continental  republic,  whose  shores  will  extend 
from  the  waters  of  the  frozen  zone  to  the  warm  waves  of  the 
tropic  sea. 

"The  next  century  will  witness  a  growth  in  glory,  wealth, 
and  prosperity  in  this  Republic  which  the  imagination  cannot 
conceive,  and  to  which  the  annals  of  nations  afford  no  pre- 
cedent or  parallel.  Perils  there  may  be  without  and  dangers 
within,  but  the  rolling  drums  and  the  martial  tread  of  the 
armed  hosts  that  yesterday  saluted  the  flag  are  an  assurance 
of  the  determination  of  the  people  to  make  this  a  government 
of  laws  and  not  of  men,  and  against  Anarchist  or  Nihilist  or 
foreign  foe  to  preserve  unimpaired  those  sacred  objects  for 
which  the  Constitution  was  ordained, — union,  justice,  tran- 
quillity, liberty  for  ourselves  and  for  our  posterity."  [Loud  and 
continued  applause.] 

"  When  we  try  to  picture  to  ourselves,"  said  Dr.  Pepper, 
"the  session-,  of  the  Federal  Convention  of  1787,  as  the  long 
and  doubtful  debates  wore  on,  a  few  men  and  a  few  groups  of 
men  stand  out  con.spicuously  clear.     Though    it  might  seem 


38 

invidious  to  discriminate,  yet  surely  none  can  doubt  that  the 
foremost  place  should  be  given  to  that  State  which  was  the 
first  to  appoint  delegates,  whose  representatives  were  the 
earliest  to  suggest  and  the  most  strenuous  to  support  the  plan 
adopted  finally,  and,  above  all,  which  sent  to  the  Convention 
the  man  who,  more  than  all  others,  commanded  the  confidence 
and  the  attachment  of  the  people, — the  immortal  Washington. 
It  is  peculiarly  appropriate,  therefore,  that  in  proposing  the 
next  toast,  'To  the  United  States  of  1787/  I  should  call 
upon  the  Hon.  Fitzhlgh  Lee,  Governor  of  Virginia,  for  a 
response  on  behalf  of  the  original  thirteen  States,  who  own 
the  proud  heritage  of  those  early  struggles." 

Hon.  FiTZHUGH  Lee  said, — 

"  Your  Excellenxy,  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
Mr.  Chairman,  and  Gentlemen  : — In  selecting  a  speaker  to 
respond  to  the  toast  just  read,  I  recognize  a  compliment  to  the 
great  commonwealth  of  Virginia,  tendered  not  only  for  the 
prominent  part  she  took  in  the  events  we  celebrate,  but  also 
because  she  furnished  one  of  her  citizens  to  be  the  president  of 
the  convention  which  framed  the  Federal  Con.stitution.  [Ap- 
plause.] Oh,  if  the  eyes  of  the  great  Washington,  looking 
from  everlasting  realms,  could  rest  upon  this  scene,  or  could 
his  vision,  sweeping  infinity,  cross  the  crystal  seas  whose  waters 
wash  eternal  shores,  and  behold  this  great  celebration  in  this 
historic  city,  he  would  indeed  rejoice  that  the  architects  of  the 
Constitution  had  erected  an  edifice  which  had  not  only  with- 
stood the  sunshine  of  peace,  but  the  rude  blasts  of  war ;  and 
to-day  is  stronger,  greater,  and  grander — ay,  more  assured  of 
perpetuity — than  at  any  hour  of  its  existence.    [Great  cheering.] 

"  The  common  sufferings  of  thirteen  British  colonies  were 
transferred  into  the  common  glory  of  thirteen  American  States 
when,  on  the  4th  of  July,   1776,  the  declaration  of  their  in- 


39 

dependence  was  passed.  Previous  to  that,  however,  good  old 
Benjamin  Franklin  had  sketched  the  Articles  of  Confederation 
and  perpetual  union  between  the  States ;  and  the  year  after  the 
declaration  of  independence,  in  1777,  Congress  passed  these 
Articles  of  Confederation.  Weak  from  the  beginning,  it  never- 
theless represented  the  federal  power  for  nearly  twelve  years. 
Then  a  change  came.  Anarchy  crept  into  the  federal  system. 
It  was  found  that  the  federal  power  was  not  great  enough  in 
some  respects.  The  ship  of  the  republic  flying  the  flag  of 
the  confederation  was  sinking.  It  would  have  to  be  brought 
back  to  the  shore  for  repairs  lest  it  go  down,  and  in  going 
down  bury  in  the  boundless  sea  the  experiment  of  a  free 
government  founded  upon  human  liberty. 

"  The  crisis  was  at  hand.  It  was  now  an  impending  catas- 
trophe. The  hour  for  its  dissolution  had  almost  arrived,  and 
Old  England's  lap  was  being  prepared  for  her  truant  colonies 
again.  The  man,  oh,  where  was  he?  the  patriot  who  could 
come  forward  and  rescue  his  country  and  save  the  union  of 
the  States  ?  And  now,  may  I  be  pardoned  if  I  say  that  old 
Virginia,  who  had  cast  into  the  common  lot  the  sword  of 
a  Washington,  the  pen  of  a  Jefferson,  and  the  eloquence  of  a 
Henry,  who,  with  more  than  Demosthenic  power,  kept  burning 
so  brightly  the  fires  of  the  Revolution,  was  equal  to  this 
emergency,  and  produced  a  James  Madison  ?     [Applause.] 

"This  citizen,  seeing  the  impending  danger,  offered  for 
the  legislature  of  his  county,  was  elected,  and  it  was  due  to 
his  eflbrts  that  Virginia  passed  the  resolution  requesting  the 
meeting  of  delegates  from  the  States  to  be  held  at  Annapolis. 
But  four  States  responded.  New  York  was  there,  Delaware 
was  there,  New  Jersey  was  there,  Pennsylvania  was  there. 
[Applause.]  And  these  representatives,  owing  largely  to  the 
efforts  of  Madison,  there  passed  the  resolutions,  drawn  up  by 
Alexander  Hamilton,  requesting  the  legislatures  of  the  States 


40 

to  send  deputies  from  all  the  States  to  meet  in  this  city  of 
Philadelphia.  And  so  the  Constitutional  Convention  was  born, 
So  the  framers  met  here  on  the  25th  of  May,  1787. 

"  But  what  a  time  that  was  when  big-hearted  Robert  Morris, 
of  Pennsylvania,  arose  and  nominated  for  the  president  of  that 
convention  George  Washington,  Esq.,  late  commander-in-chief 
of  the  colonial  forces  and  a  deputy  from  Virginia!  [Applause.] 
It  came  with  i>eculiar  grace,  we  are  told,  from  the  Pennsylvania 
delegation  because  she  had  in  her  delegation  the  only  member 
that  could  possibly  be  a  competitor  with  Washington  for  that 
position.  Dr.  Franklin,  the  gentleman  to  whom  I  refer,  in- 
tended to  place  Washington  in  nomination  himself,  but  the 
state  of  the  weather  and  his  own  health  prevented  him  from 
being  present.  Under  these  auspices  this  convention  met,  and 
for  four  months  they  labored  to  perfect  a  scheme  for  human 
government.  Oh,  my  friends,  what  an  anxious  period  that 
was.  We  have  .seen  divisions  charging  the  fiqry  heights,  while 
both  armies  waited  and  wondered.  And  we  have  read  of  the 
charge  of  the  six  hundred  at  Balaklava,  while  both  sides  stood 
trembling  and  looking  on.  But  here  these  patriots  were  en- 
gaged in  their  work,  and  the  whole  world  wondered  whether 
they  would  succeed.  Think  of  it !  F"orty-nine  delegates  were 
present  making  a  form  of  government  for  four  millions  of 
people.  Here  were  great  mountains,  whose  swelling  sides  hid 
the  wealth  of  centuries  underneath ;  here  were  broad  rivers, 
whose  currents  were  inviting  the  sails  of  commerce ;  here 
were  huge  forests,  whose  trees  were  waving  for  the  saw  ;  here 
were  cities — great  cities — waiting  for  the  magic  touch  of  the 
workman  ;  here  were  waters  waiting  idle  for  the  wheel  of  the 
manufacturer.  Ay,  these  patriots  were  equal  to  their  task, 
and  they  produced  what  Mr.  Gladstone  but  yesterday  again 
repeated  as  the  greatest  work  yet  struck  off  with  a  single 
stroke  of  the  brain  and  purpose  of  man.    There  were,  however, 


41 

gentlemen,  two  disturbing  influences  left  unsettled.  It  is  hard 
at  this  hour  to  imagine  how  those  patriotic  framers  of  the 
Constitution  could  have  settled  them  then  and  there.  They 
were  left.  I  refer  to  the  slavery  question,  and  to  that  question 
of  the  right  of  the  withdrawal  of  a  State  from  the  Union  they 
were  then  forming.  Brilliant,  bright  John  Randolph,  who  was 
a  boy  when  he  witne.s.sed  the  inauguriition  of  Washington, 
said :  '  I  see  what  but  two  other  men  in  the  country  sec.  I 
.see  the  poison  under  the  wing  of  the  American  eagle,  now 
being  plumed  for  his  flight,  and  it  should  be  extracted  lest  it 
shed  pestilence  and  death  over  the  country  whose  destiny  it  is 
to  protect.'  This  disturbing  influence,  I  .say,  was  left.  But  the 
sword,  I  have  reason  to  know,  stepped  in  from  1861  to  1865 
and  destroyed  the  disturbing  influences,  and  the  poison  has 
dropped  from  under  the  wing  of  the  eagle.  [Great  applause.] 
"  What  then,  gentlemen,  is  to  prevent  this  great  country 
from  going  on  and  fulfilling  its  destiny  ?  The  strings  of  the 
patriotic  hearts  of  the  founders  of  the  Republic  were  touched 
by  the  hand  of  compromise  and  mutual  concession,  and  fra- 
ternal music  floated  over  the  land.  And  so,  if  we,  the  men  of 
1887,  should  be  guided  by  the  examples  of  moderation  and  con- 
cession and  compromise  of  the  men  of  1787,  in  1987  the  cele- 
bration, to  which  my  learned  friend  from  Kansas  has  referred, 
will  take  place.  And  I  pray  to  God  that  every  footstep  in  the 
life  of  the  Republic  from  this  period  to  that  may  be  marked 
by  blessed  peace,  union,  fraternity,  progress,  and  prosperity. 
[Applause.]  Wc  arc  told  that  behind  the  chair  of  President 
Washington,  when  he  presided  over  the  convention,  was  the 
representation  of  a  sun  near  the  horizon ;  and  good  old  Dr. 
Franklin  said,  as  he  sat  there,  that  he  had  always  understood 
it  was  difificult  for  the  painter  to  so  paint  the  sun  close  to  the 
horizon  so  as  to  tell  whether  the  sun  was  rising  or  setting. 
'  But,'  said  he,  '  after  the  Constitution  had  been  passed  and  the 

6 


42 

last  members  were  signing,  1  looked  at  the  sun  behind  Presi- 
dent Washington,  and  I  saw  for  the  first  time  that  it  was  a  rising 
sun.'  Oh,  Dr.  Franislin,  it  was  indeed  a  rising  sun !  It  has 
been  obscured  temporarily  since,  but  now  it  is  shining  in  all 
the  splendor  of  an  unclouded  majesty,  bearing  peace  and  hap- 
piness into  the  hearts  and  homes  of  si.xty  millions  of  people." 
[Long-continued  applause  and  cheers.] 

"  You  have  heard,"  .said  Dr.  Pepper,  "  one  of  the  many  anec- 
dotes of  Franklin  in  connection  with  the  Federal  Convention, 
and  I  am  reminded  of  the  quaint  u.se  he  makes  of  an  observa- 
tion that  .some  flies  apparently  drowned  in  a  bottle  of  Madeira 
were  revived  by  exposure  to  the  rays  of  the  sun.  '  I  wish  it 
were  possible,'  said  he,  '  from  this  instance,  to  invent  a  method 
of  embalming  drowned  persons  in  such  a  manner  that  they  may 
be  recalled  to  life  at  any  period,  however  distant ;  for,  having  a 
very  ardent  desire  to  see  and  observe  the  state  of  America  a 
hundred  years  hence,  I  should  prefer  to  any  ordinary  death  the 
being  immersed  in  a  cask  of  Madeira  wine  with  a  few  friends  till 
that  time,  to  be  then  recalled  to  life  by  the  solar  warmth  of  my 
dear  country.'  With  the  glorious  vision  to  which  he  would 
awake,  of  sixty  millions  of  people,  happy,  prosperous,  and 
united,  we  are  too  familiar  to  be  mindful  of  its  real  significance. 
Certainly,  had  he  stood  with  us  this  morning  while  in  the  clear 
air  there  rang  out  that  fine  refrain — 

'  While  the  stars  in  heaven  shall  bum. 
While  the  ocean  tides  return. 
Ever  shall  the  circling  sun 
Find  the  many  still  are  one' — 

he  would  have  gratefully  recognized  the  completion  of  his  old 
prophecy  in  the  glowing  words  of  our  centennial  poet. 

"  Our  triumphs  of  this  past  century  have  not  been  wholly 


43 

material  ones,  but  moral  and  political  and  intellectual  and 
artistic  as  well.  And  he  who  is  to  respond  to  the  toast  of 
'The  United  States  of  1887'  must  keep  touch  at  many 
points  with  this  new  world.  Difficult  as  the  task,  you  will 
agree  it  is  assigned  to  most  worthy  hands  when  I  call  on 
Hon.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  of  Massachusetts,  for  a 
response." 

"  You  have  called  upon  me,  Mr.  Chairman,"  responded  Mr. 
Adams,  "  to  say  a  word  for  the  present,  as  contradistinguished 
from  the  past ;  the  year  that  now  is,  is  set  face  to  face  with  the 
year  a  century  gone.  I  must  seek  to  compress  the  significance 
of  an  hundred  years  into  a  sentence.  Looking  back  over  that 
century, — gathering  up  in  one  confused  glance  all  the  revolu- 
tions, material,  intellectual,  and  political,  which  have  been 
crowded  into  it  (for  from  1789  to  the  day  that  now  is  it  has 
been  replete  with  revolutions), — gathering  all  this  in,  I  say,  at  a 
glance,  at  first  it  does  not  seem  that  any  written  form  of  govern- 
ment possible  to  be  devised  by  man  could  contain  within  itself 
the  elements  of  .strength,  vitality,  and  elasticity  to  enable  it  to 
meet  successfully  the  trials  to  which  our  national  Constitution 
has  perforce  been  subjected. 

"  During  that  century — almost  wholly  during  it — man  has 
obtained  his  scientific  mastery  over  material  forces.  When  the 
Convention  of  1787  met  in  this  city,  those  composing  it  came 
hither  on  the  back  of  the  wind  or  the  back  of  the  horse, 
neither  so  rapidly  nor  so  conveniently  as  the  conclaves  of  the 
Church  had  gathered  at  Rome  through  a  thousand  years. 
Franklin  had  indeed  half  a  century  before,  and  within  the 
limits  of  this  city,  drawn  down  the  lightning  from  heaven ;  but 
another  half  century  was  to  elapse  before  it  was  to  be  ren- 
dered docile  and  subjected  to  the  uses  of  man.  This  has  been 
the  era  of  the  steam-engine  and  the  telegraph  ;  and  in  presence 


44 

of  powers  like  these,  men,  and  constitutions  made  by  man, 
become  like  jilaythings  of  an  hour. 

"  Consider  for  an  instant  the  influence  these  material  forces 
have  had  on  the  development  of  that  which  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  was  intended  to  control.  Strange  as  it 
may  sound,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  these  forces  of  steam 
and  electricity  have  within  the  century  not  only  saved  the  Con- 
stitution, making  its  perpetuity  possible,  but  they  have  actually 
made  the  wrong  construction  of  it  the  right  construction,  and 
the  right  construction  wrong. 

"  But  let  me  explain.  From  the  very  beginning  there  have 
been  two  views  of  the  Constitution, — the  liberal  view  and  the 
strict  view.  In  the  first  cabinet  of  Washington,  Hamilton 
represented  one  side  of  the  great  debate  which  has  gone  on 
from  that  day  to  this,  and  Jefferson  the  other.  Both  parties  to 
this  debate  have,  I  submit,  been  for  a  part  of  the  time  right ; 
both  have  been  for  a  part  of  the  time  wrong.  The  unexpected 
occurred :  steam  and  electricity  have  in  these  days  converted 
each  thoughtful  Hamiltonian  into  a  believer  in  the  construction 
theories  of  Jefferson ;  while,  none  the  less,  events  have  at  the 
same  time  conclusively  shown  that  in  his  own  day  Jefferson 
was  wrong  and  Hamilton  was  right. 

"  This,  as  Hamlet  says,  '  was  sometime  a  paradox,  but  now 
the  time  gives  it  proof;'  in  other  words,  an  equally  thoughtful 
and  observant  man,  looking  before  and  after,  understanding  the 
physical  conditions  of  his  country,  and  desirous  only  of  its 
good, — such  a  man,  in  the  light  of  all  subsequent  events, 
could  not  but  have  felt  that  a  strong  central  government — 
such  a  government  as  could  only  be  secured  through  a  liberal 
construction  of  the  Constitution — was  for  the  United  States  of 
the  time  anterior  to  1830  a  political  necessity.  Without  it  the 
country  must  fall  to  pieces.  So  Hamilton  was  right  and  Jeffer- 
son was  wrong.     Then  the  railroad  and  the  telegraph  came 


45 

upon  the  stage,  and  under  the  new  conditions  they  created  and 
imposed  the  shield  was  reversed, — Jefferson  became  right  and 
Hamilton  wrong. 

"  Why,  consider  for  a  moment  the  kaleidoscopic  changes  of 
the  problem.  During  the  first  half  of  its  con.stitutional  cen- 
tury, the  United  States  was  a  vast  and  sparsely-.settled  country, 
devoid  of  means  of  communication,  and  with  little  diversity  of 
industries ;  its  parts  recognized  no  centres  of  thought  or  of  busi- 
ness, and  teemed  with  sectional  pride  and  local  jealousies ;  it 
was  a  country  always  on  the  verge  of  dissolution  from  mere 
lack  of  the  very  elements  of  cohesiveness ;  in  other  words,  the 
centrifugal  tendency  continually  threatened  to  overcome  the 
centripetal  force.  Unless  it  was  doomed  to  destruction,  it  was 
for  the  government  to  hold  such  a  country  together.  This 
was  Hamilton's  political  faith,  and  in  his  day  and  generation 
Hamilton  was  right.  But  ours  is  another  day  and  a  different 
generation.  Science  has  supplied  that  cohesive  element  which 
then  it  was  the  study  of  the  statesman  to  provide.  It  is 
from  the  other  side  of  the  circle  that  danger  is  now  to  be  an- 
ticipated ;  everything  to-day  centralizes  itself;  gravitation  is  the 
law.  The  centripetal  force,  unaided  by  government,  working 
only  through  scientific  sinews  and  nerves  of  steel  and  steam 
and  lightning, — this  centripetal  force  is  daily  overcoming  all 
centrifugal  action.  The  ultimate  result  can  by  thoughtful  men 
no  longer  be  ignored.    Jefferson  is  right,  and  Hamilton  is  wrong. 

"  And  thus,  as  the  political  error  of  yesterday  becomes  the 
truth  of  to-day,  it  is  the  thoroughly  consistent  man  only  who  is 
hopelessly  in  error.  The  destinies  of  nations  are  much  more 
frequently  decided  in  the  workshops  of  mechanics  than  in  the 
cabinets  of  statesmen.  When  thus  regarded,  how  small  and 
immaterial  appear  the  wrangling  debates  of  the  Senate  and 
the  clamor  of  the  hustings !  We  turn  from  them  to  watch  the 
genius  of  Franklin  as  from  yonder  hill  it  soars  with  his  kite  to 


46 

the  cloud,  or  to  think  of  Watt  patiently  bending  in  thought 
over  the  steam  that  jets  from  the  nozzle  of  a  tea-kettle.  It  is 
these  men  who  within  the  century  have  saved  for  us  the  Con- 
stitution and  shaped  it  to  our  needs. 

"  But  to-day,  Mr.  Chairman,  and  in  this  presence,  I  cannot 
speak  only  of  the  present  or  of  the  influence  of  its  science  on 
the  constitutional  theories  of  the  past.  I  remember  that  I  am 
speaking  for  Massachusetts  as  well  as  for  the  year  that  is,  and 
so  my  mind  insensibly  reverts  to  other  times  and  other  men, 
and  to  another  member  of  the  Old  Thirteen. 

"  We  have  heard  somewhat  of  late  of  the  originators  of 
what  is  called  '  the  written  Constitution,'  and  of  the  framers  of 
that  particular  instrument,  the  centennial  of  which  we  celebrate. 
I  would  in  no  degree  detract  from  the  credit  which  is  theirs  by 
right,  nor  from  the  encomiums  which  have  here  been  lavished 
upon  them.  Honor  to  whom  honor  is  due ;  and  much  honor 
from  us,  at  least,  is  due  to  them.  Verily,  as  of  old  so  also  now 
is  that  saying  true, — '  One  soweth  and  another  reapeth ;  .  .  . 
other  men  labored,  and  ye  are  entered  into  their  labors.' 

"  But  it  was  Pope,  I  believe,  who  wrote,  fifty  years  before  the 
Constitution  was  passed, — 

'  For  fonns  of  government  let  fools  contest ; 
Whate'er  is  best  administered  is  best.' 

While  no  one  would,  I  suppose,  give  unqualified  assent  to 
this  epigrammatic  couplet,  yet  few  will  deny  that  it  is  a  far  less 
difficult  task  to  devise  and  frame  a  paper  constitution  than  to 
put  a  constitution,  fresh  from  the  hands  of  its  framers,  in  prac- 
tical and  successful  operation.  Indeed,  the  world  during  the 
last  hundred  years  and  more  has  swarmed  with  constitution- 
makers, — or  constitution-mongers,  as  they  are  sometimes  irrev- 
erently called.  Nearly  a  century  ago  Burke  contemptuously 
described  them,  with  their  '  whole  nests  of  pigeon-holes  full  of 


47 

constitutions  ready-made,  ticketed,  sorted,  and  numbered,  suited 
to  every  season  and  every  fancy;  some  with  the  top  of  the 
pattern  at  the  bottom,  and  some  with  the  bottom  at  the  top ; 
some  plain,  some  flowered,  some  distinguished  for  their  sim- 
plicity, others  for  their  complexity ;  some  in  long  coats,  and 
some  in  short  cloaks ;  some  in  pantaloons,  some  without 
breeches ;  some  with  five-shilling  qualifications,  some  totally 
unqualified.' 

"  In  a  world  thus  full  of  governmental  contrivance,  it  has 
been,  as  Pope  truly  put  it,  less  a  question  of  ingenuity  on 
paper  than  of  administrative  skill.  Many  nations  on  both  con- 
tinents have  before  and  since  the  year  1800  framed  cunningly- 
devised  charters  and  forms  of  fundamental  laws ;  the  difficulty 
has  almost  invariably  been  that,  when  set  upon  its  feet,  the 
Constitution,  as  Carlyle  phrased  it,  'would  not  walk;'  it  is  our 
boast  that  in  America  alone  has  the  miracle  been  accomplished. 
Our  Constitution  has  now  '  walked'  for  an  hundred  years,  and 
that  is  why  we  are  here. 

"  Why  has  this  Constitution  '  walked'  when  so  many  others 
fell  ?  That  it  did  so,  was,  I  hold,  due  to  two  men  more  than  to, 
all  other  men  and  all  other  circumstances,  save  one,  combined, 
— those  two  men  were  not  sons  of  Massachusetts,  but  of  Vir- 
ginia,— and  to  these  two,  more,  far  more  than  to  the  framers, 
are  the  honors  of  this  occasion  due. 

"  The  aged  historian  of  the  United  States,  whose  gathered 
years  wellnigh  cover  the  whole  life  of  the  nation,  has  recently 
recorded  that  the  immediate  successor  of  Washington,  when  in 
doubt  as  to  whom  the  people  would  choose  to  the  high  office 
soon  to  be  made  vacant,  declared  that  the  Constitution  was, 
even  then,  already  so  perfectly  established  that  the  system  of 
government  could  not  be  departed  from  by  any  one,  no  matter 
who  might  be  chosen  President.  '  Even  Jefferson,'  he  wrote, 
'  could  not  stir  a  step  in  any  other  system  than  that  which  was 


"48 

begun.  .  .  .  There  is  no  more  danger  in  a  change  [of  the  Presi- 
dent] than  there  would  be  in  changing  a  member  of  the  Sen- 
ate ;  and  whoever  Hves  to  see  it  will  own  me  a  prophet.'  Thus, 
in  1796,  the  miracle  had  already  been  performed, — the  Con- 
stitution '  walked ;'  for  eight  yearg  it  had  been  administered 
by  Washington,  who  during  these  years  proved  himself  greater 
— far  greater — in  peace  than  before  he  had  proved  himself  in 
war. 

"  Still,  the  Constitution,  even  as  late  as  1800,  was,  as  it  were, 
but  in  the  gristle  and  not  yet  hardened  into  the  bone.  The 
work  of  administration  had  been  done ;  that  of  construction  re- 
mained to  do.  Nations  change,  grow,  expand ;  new  and  un- 
foreseen conditions  are  developed ;  science,  a.s  1  have  already 
shown,  works  its  results  in  the  body  politic  much  as  the  strong 
sap  works  in  the  young  tree, — it  is  the  unanticipated  which 
occurs.  Would  the  Constitution  adapt  itself  as  a  garment  to 
growing  limbs,  or  would  it  bind  them  in  swaddling-clothes  of 
iron  ?  This  was  the  momentous  question  in  the  early  years  of 
the  century.  Again  it  was  a  son  of  Virginia  who  proved  to  be 
the  right  man  in  the  right  place;  and  for  more  than  thirty 
years  John  Marshall  presided  over  the  tribunal  which  during 
that  eventful  jx;riod  gave  strength  and  consistence,  elasticity 
and  permanence,  power  to  resist  and  capacity  to  receive — steel 
and  India-rubber,  gutta-percha  and  adamant — to  that  Constitu- 
tion which  Washington  had  taken  from  the  hands  of  its  framers 
and  first  made  to  '  walk.'  The  result  we  see  to-day ;  and  to 
these  two  men  that  result  in  greatest  part  is  due. 

"  And  in  lauding  them  we  laud  ourselves.  It  has  well  been 
said  that  for  the  ordinary  man  it  is  enough  of  honor  to  speak 
great  Shakespeare's  tongue ;  and  so  we  Americans  may  well 
take  pride  that  we  are  descended  from  those  who  made  Wash- 
ington and  Marshall  possible.  No  individual  can  move  far  in 
advance  of  the  people  and  of  the  age  in  which  his  lot  is  cast 


49 

I  hold,  therefore,  that  it  is  praise  enough  for  the  average  citizen 
of  the  United  States,  during  the  century  which  has  now  come 
to  a  close,  to  say  that  he  was  one  of  the  supporting  column  at 
the  head  of  which  walked  George  Washington  and  John 
Marshall ;  for  how  shall  even  wise  and  valiant  captains  pre- 
vail unless  they  be  followed  by  soldiers  brave  and  intelligent, 
and  what  availeth  a  prophet  unless  he  speaks  to  those  who, 
having  cars,  are  no  less  capable  of  understanding  than  of  hear- 
ing? What  volumes,  then,  does  it  speak  of  the  political 
capacity  and  moral  worth  of  a  whole  people,  when  history 
records  that  in  the  hour  of  trial  men  like  Washington  and 
Marshall  came  forth  from  the  ranks,  that  the  whole  people  put 
those  men  in  their  high  places  ;  followed  and  sustained  them 
while  they  lived,  and  now,  when  only  their  work  survives, 
honor  and  revere  them,  and  give  ear  unto  their  precepts.  As 
it  was  with  our  fathers  so  may  it  be  with  us  ;  let  us  put  our 
feet  in  their  tracks,  in  which  we  can  neither  wander  nor 
stumble."     [Applause.] 

The  Chairman  then  said, — 

"  Emblem  of  our  sovereign  power,  and  itself  of  mighty  force, 
because  the  sword  now  borne  sheathed  would,  if  drawn  in  a 
righteous  cause  by  an  united  America,  become  wellnigh  irre- 
sistible, I  give  you  the  toast  of  '  The  Army  of  the  United 
States,'  and  call  on  that  most  gallant  of  .soldiers  and  truest- 
hearted  of  comrades,  Lieutenant-General  Philip  H.  Sheridan, 
for  a  response." 

General  Sheridan  said, — 

"  Mr.  Chairman, — I  never  discussed  the  Constitution  very 
much,  nor  made  many  speeches  upon  it,  but  I  have  done  a 
good  deal  of  fighting  for  it.  [Great  applause.]  But  I  cannot 
let  this  occasion  pass  without  expressing  my  thanks,  my  grate- 

7 


50 

ful  acknowledgments,  and  my  sincere  gratitude  to  the  Centen- 
nial Commission  and  to  the  citizens  of  Philadelphia  for  inviting 
me  to  be  present  on  this  occasion.  It  has  been  a  delightful 
occasion  to  me,  and  it  is  one  which  will  always  be  dear  to  my 
memory.  It  is  the  first  centennial  of  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  every 
soldier  in  the  Army  entertains  the  sentiments  I  feel,  becau.se 
the  old  regular  Army  has  a  representation  here.  [Applause.] 
As  you  know,  for  many  years  we  have  been  cut  off  from  all 
these  occasions  where  there  was  a  chance  for  a  little  patriotic 
feeling,  and  we  have  been  as  it  were  forgotten.  Now,  I  hope, 
we  are  to  come  in  and  will  be  able  to  participate  in  these 
celebrations  the  .same  as  other  citizens. 

"  The  so-called  Army  of  the  United  States,  gentlemen,  is  very 
small,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  but  it  is  the  Army  of  sixty  millions  of 
people,  and  if  they  are  satisfied  with  it  nobody  has  any  right 
to  complain.  [Applause.]  The  officers  of  that  Army  are  a 
highly-educated  body  of  gentlemen.  There  is  none  more  so 
in  any  profession.  The  soldiers  are  well  disciplined,  subordi- 
nate, and  obedient  to  all  demands  made  upon  them. 

"  We  see  the  time  coming  when  we  will  not  be  so  much 
engaged  in  Indian  hostilities.  Then  we  will  be  willing  to  come 
and  join  with  the  State  forces  and  cordially  co-operate  with 
them,  so  that  in  the  event  of  any  necessity  we  can  mobilize  a 
good  strong  army  in  this  country.  [Applause.]  The  regular 
Army  of  the  United  States  is  a  mere  fiction.  The  real  Army  of 
the  United  States  is  all  the  able-bodied  citizens  of  the  United 
States  capable  of  bearing  arms.  Mobilized  it  would  amount  to 
four  or  five  million  good  soldiers. 

"  Now,  if  all  the  shipping  in  Europe  were  allowed  to  come 
over  here  carrying  men  and  materials  of  war,  and  the  Navy 
under  Admiral  Luce  was  to  let  them  come  over,  without  inter- 
fering with  them  in  any  way,  they  could  not  carry  men  and 


51 

war-material  enough  to  make  one  campaign.  [Applause.]  So 
that  the  Arni)'  of  the  United  States,  in  that  sense,  would  be 
about  the  largest  army  in  the  world ;  but,  as  it  is  found  to-day, 
it  is  about  the  smallest. 

"  I  am  rather  on  the  side  of  Senator  Ingalls  in  what  he  said 
to-night.  He  wants  to  make  a  continental  republic  of  this 
country.  But  there  is  one  thing  that  you  should  appreciate, 
and  that  is  that  the  improvement  in  guns  and  in  the  material 
of  war,  in  dynamite  and  other  explosives,  and  in  breech- 
loading  guns,  is  rapidly  bringing  us  to  a  period  when  war  will 
eliminate  itself,  when  we  can  no  longer  stand  up  and  fight  each 
other  in  battle,  and  when  we  will  have  to  resort  to  something 
else.  Now,  what  will  that  'something  else'  be?  It  will  be 
arbitration.  [Applause.]  I  mean  what  I  say  when  I  express 
the  belief  that  if  any  one  now  present  here  could  live  until 
the  next  centennial  he  would  find  that  arbitration  will  rule  the 
world."     [Cheers  and  continued  applause.] 

The  Chairman  said, — 

"  Peace  is  mo.st  sure  when  war  is  least  to  be  feared.  The 
glorious  annals  of  our  Navy  remain  among  our  proudest  pos- 
sessions. Our  gallant  officers  and  men  are  now,  we  know,  as 
brave  as  ever  were  the  bravest.  But  proud  recollections  and 
present  security  may  dull  the  ear  to  calls  of  future  needs. 
And  in  giving  you  the  toast  of  '  The  Navy  of  the  United 
States,'  I  would  couple  with  it  the  prayer  that  a  wisely 
liberal  policy  on  the  part  of  successive  governments  may  ever 
maintain  it  as  befits  the  dignity  and  the  position  of  this  great 
wave-washed  land. 

"  I  would  beg  to  call  on  Rear-Admiral  Stephen  B.  Luce 
to  respond." 


52 

Admiral  Luce  replied  as  follows: 

"  In  behalf  of  my  brother  officers  of  the  naval  profession 
and  myself,  I  return  our  cordial  thanks  for  the  honor  con- 
ferred upon  the  Navy  upon  this  momentous  occasion.  And, 
in  doing  so,  it  is  with  a  feeling  of  exultation  that  I  find  myself 
able  to  announce  that,  in  the  grand  march  of  events  which  has 
distinguished  the  centennial  year  just  closed,  the  Navy  has  not 
fallen  in  the  rear.  Small  in  mere  numerical  force,  it  has  yet 
kept  pace  with  the  intellectual  progress  of  the  age.  In  that 
respect,  at  least,  it  may  safely  challenge  a  comparison  with  any 
of  the  navies  of  the  Old  World. 

"  While  the  century  was  .still  young,  the  school  of  the  naval 
officer  was  on  the  quarter-deck.  It  was  there  that  the 
'  young  gentlemen"  learned  their  first  lessons  in  that  art  of 
seamanship  which  formed  one  of  the  distinguishing  features 
of  our  early  Navy,  and  contributed  so  largely  to  our  successes 
in  the  War  of  1812. 

"In  1838  the  first  attempt  to  furnish  our  midshipmen  with 
something  like  educational  facilities  was  made  here  in  the  city 
of  Philadelphia,  at  the  Naval  A.sylum,  then  under  the  gov- 
ernorship of  the  gallant  Commodore  James  Biddle,  of  this  city. 
It  was  at  the  Naval  Asylum  that  the  distinguished  admiral 
of  the  Navy  and  the  vice-admiral  passed  their  examinations  for 
promotion. 

"  But  a  longing  on  the  part  of  our  officers  for  wider  fields  of 
knowledge  soon  developed  itself  The  Naval  Lyceum,  estab- 
lished at  the  Navy  Yard,  New  York,  in  1833,  was  organized 
for  the  express  purpose  of  '  promoting  a  diffusion  of  u.seful 
knowledge.'  It  published  a  jVai-a/  Magazine,  at  that  time  the 
only  one,  and  for  many  years  the  best,  that  had  appeared  in 
this  country.  This  was  followed  in  1838  by  the  exploring 
expedition  under  Lieutenant  (the  late  Rear-Admiral)  Charles 
Wilkes.     A  depot  of  charts  and  instruments  had  already  been 


53 

established  in  the  Navy  Department  as  early  as  1830,  and  as- 
tronomical observations  had  been  made  by  Lieutenant  Wilkes, 
the  first,  it  is  believed,  undertaken  in  this  country.  On  the  de- 
pairture  of  the  exploring  expedition,  commanded  by  the  officer 
just  named,  these  observations,  conducted  by  Lieutenant  James 
M.  Gillis,  were  continued,  by  order  of  the  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  for  the  purpose  of  determining  differences  of  longitude 
with  the  stations  which  might  be  occupied  by  the  expedition. 

"  Such  was  the  origin  of  the  Naval  Observatory  at  Washing- 
ton, an  institution  which,  besides  its  valuable  contributions  to 
the  science  of  astronomy,  has  done  so  much  towards  the  more 
thorough  instruction  of  our  officers  in  nautical  astronomy  and 
the  cultivation  of  their  taste  for  the  science  itself 

"  Astronomical  observations,  originally  undertaken  in  an 
unpretending  manner  by  our  naval  officers,  carried  on  in  con- 
junction with  the  great  naval  expedition,  undertaken  in  the 
interests  of  science,  and  continued  for  the  better  part  of  the 
century  under  the  superintendency  of  naval  officers,  it  is  only 
natural  that  we  have  always  claimed,  and  always  will  claim,  the 
outgrowth  of  these  early  endeavors,  the  Naval  Observatory  at 
Washington,  as  our  peculiar  property.  Jt  is  the  living  witness 
of  the  progressive  spirit  of  the  Navy.  And  it  is  a  high 
tribute,  indeed,  to  the  success  of  the  naval  administration  of 
the  Obser\'atory  that  the  French  government,  profiting  by  our 
example,  has  placed  a  naval  officer,  Rear-Admiral  Mouchez,  in 
charge  of  the  National  Observatory  in  France. 

"The  coast  survey  had  already  begun  its  great  work,  em- 
ploying many  naval  officers  on  the  hydrography  of  our  rivers 
and  harbors,  and  on  the  inshore  and  deep-sea  soundings.  This 
special  branch  of  the  public  service  has  expanded  with  the 
rest.  The  hydrographic  office,  with  its  extensive  fields  of 
research,  is  rendering  good  .service  to  our  navigation  interests, 
as  all  our  seaport  towns  will  attest,  and  the  labors  of  Com- 


54 

mander  C.  D.  Sigsbee  and  Lieutenant  J.  E.  Pillsbury,  United 
States  Navy,  with  ingeniously-contrived  instruments,  of  their 
own  invention,  in  examining  the  origin,  extent,  phenomenon, 
and  influence  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  will  doubtless  prove  among 
the  most  valuable  contributions  of  the  day  to  the  physical  geog- 
raphy of  the  sea.  The  deep-sea  soundings  and  surveys  in  dis- 
tant parts  of  the  world,  the  correction  of  longitude  by  tele- 
graphic comparisons  of  time,  the  light-house  service,  all  give 
employment  to  a  body  of  officers  who,  while  rendering  good 
service  to  the  country,  are  obtaining  more  extended  knowledge 
and  experience  in  those  special  branches  of  their  profession. 

"That  our  naval  officers  are  found  qualified  for  so  much 
scientific  work  is  due,  mainly,  to  the  Naval  Academy. 

"The  Naval  Academy  rendered  possible,  or  rather  has  re- 
sulted in,  the  Naval  Institute,  which  was  established  '  for  the 
advancement  of  professional  and  scientific  knowledge  in  the 
Navy.'  Its  publications  have  already  enriched  our  professional 
literature. 

"  The  Naval  Academy  rendered  possible  the  office  of  Naval 
Intelligence,  which,  though  of  recent  origin,  has,  by  its  rapid 
growth  and  extensive  researches,  become  one  of  the  most 
important  adjuncts  of  the  Navy  Department.  And  by  a  nat- 
ural law  of  development  the  Naval  Academy  has  produced  the 
Torpedo  School  and  that  crowning  glory  of  our  educational 
system,  the  Naval  War  College,  the  like  of  which,  for  the 
breadth  and  comprehensiveness  of  its  scheme  of  lectures  on 
the. science  and  art  of  war  and  on  international  law,  is  not  to 
be  found  in  any  other  country  in  the  world. 

"  This  is  a  record  of  which  the  Navy  may  be  justly  proud. 

"  Nor  have  our  seamen  been  neglected.  Our  training 
squadron  is  bringing  out  a  class  of  young  sailors,  who  for 
their  loyalty,  habits  of  discipline,  intelligence,  and  their  re- 
markable aptitude  for  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  the  use  of 


55 

modern  arms  and  the  various  naval'  appliance  to  be  found  on 
board  the  later  types  of  ships  of  war,  will  compare  favorably 
with  any  body  of  seamen  in  the  world. 

"  Thus  much  for  the  personnel  of  the  Navy. 

"  With  regard  to  ships  of  war  we  certainly  enjoy  an  envi- 
able reputation.  In  numerical  force  alone  have  we  been  found 
wanting. 

"From  the  frigates  built  in  '97  to  those  launched  in  '55  we 
have  excelled  other  nations  in  the  beauty,  strength,  and  fight- 
ing qualities  of  our  men  of  war. 

"  Those  magnificent  specimens  of  naval  architecture  known 
as  the  Minnesota  class,  carrying  batteries  until  then  unthought 
of,  were  for  years  the  objects  of  universal  admiration. 

"  Will  any  one  have  the  hardihood  to  say  that  this  bright 
chapter  in  our  history  shall  suddenly  and  forever  close  ? 

"  The  history  of  every  navy  shows  that  each  in  its  turn  has 
had  its  flood-tide  of  prosperity  as  well  as  its  periods  of  depres- 
sion. Our  own  forms  no  exception  to  the  rule.  But  the  ex- 
tremes with  us  have  never  been  excessive. 

"  In  the  early  days  of  the  century  ship-building  flourished 
most  generously  where  ship-timber  abounded,  and  during  long 
years  ship-building  formed  one  of  the  principal  industries  of 
our  eastern  coasts.  But  now,  the  naval  architect,  abandoning 
the  timber  lands,  looks  for  his  materials  in  the  iron  and  coal 
regions,  and  the  banks  of  the  Delaware  have  now  become  the 
birthplace  and  cradle  of  the  New  Navy. 

"  The  city  of  Philadelphia  has  been  associated  with  the 
history  of  the  Navy  in  a  peculiar  manner. 

"The  remains  of  the  Alliance,  the  last  ship  of  the  Conti- 
nental Navy,  and  consort  of  the  Bonhomme  Richard,  during 
her  celebrated  fight  under  Paul  Jones  in  1779,  now  lies  upon 
her  shores. 

"  During  an  interval  of  twelve  years  we  had  no  Navy.     But 


56 

the  Continental  Navy  died  only  as  the  fruitful  seed  dies  to 
germinate  and  bring  forth  more  abundantly ;  and  not  long  after 
the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  measures  were  taken  to  build 
a  Navy,  and  the  frigate  United  States,  launched  in  Philadel- 
phia in  '97,  was  the  first  ship  afloat  of  the  Navy  under  our 
government  as  at  present  organized. 

"  And  now  wc  have  the  beautiful  Dolphin,  the  first  ship  of 
the  Navy  of  steel. 

"  The  Navy  is  small  indeed,  and  if  sixty  millions  of  people 
deem  that  it  shall  remain  so,  we,  of  the  profe.ssion,  cheerfully 
acquiesce  in  their  decision. 

"  But  when,  in  the  fulness  of  time  and  the  wisdom  of  Con- 
gress, the  burdens  which  now  embarrass  our  mercantile  marine 
shall  be  removed,  and  our  ocean  commerce  shall  once  more 
spread  over  every  sea,  then  will  the  Navy  attain  its  full  and 
natural  growth,  not  in  numbers  perhaps,  but  in  the  perfection 
of  its  organization  and  means  and  capacity  of  expansion. 

"  A  change  in  the  colors  or  device  of  a  flag  generally  indi- 
cates a  change  in  the  political  conditions  of  the  country  it 
represents. 

"  But  our  beautiful  flag  during  the  century  just  closing  has 
changed  only  in  the  lustre  and  abundance  of  the  stars  in  its 
canton.  Let  us  pray  that  those  stars — symbols  of  our  States 
— may  never  be  subject  to  perturbation  nor  occultation ;  but 
that  each  one  may,  like  the  celestial  spheres,  silently  and 
steadfastly  follow  its  appointed  course  in  jierfect  harmony  with 
law  and  order,  and  in  humble  submission  to  the  will  of  the 
Great  Ruler  of  all."     [Applause.] 

"  In  rising  to  propose  the  ne.xt  toast,"  said  the  Ch.-virman,  "  I 
confess  I  feel  myself  almost  unable  to  confine  within  the  limits 
of  a  few  formal  phrases  the  thoughts  and  emotions  which  are 
suggested  by  the  theme.     Deep  in  the  very  constitution  of  our 


57 

natures,  stamped  ineradicably  in  the  structure  of  our  frames, 
the  qualities  of  race  assert  themselves.  The  force  of  hered- 
ity cannot  be  evaded.  Temporary  dissensions  may  alienate, 
fierce  passions  may  throw  into  deadly  conflict,  the  members  of 
a  family,  the  sections  of  a  race.  Wide  separation,  divergent 
interests,  may  well-nigh  efface  all  apparent  kinship  for  a  time. 
But  the  fundamental  and  germinal  principles  still  persist  in 
common ;  and,  though  evolution  permits  variety,  it  will  never 
break  the  links  which  bind  the  distant  descendants  to  the 
ancestral  type.  Here  in  America  we  have  welcomed  millions 
from  many  lands.  Our  race  is  no  longer  of  simple  strain,  but 
the  manifold  currents  have  crossed  and  blended,  and  have 
flowed  through  such  new  environment  of  climate  and  social 
conditions,  that  out  of  this  it  might  seem  as  though  there 
would  come  a  new  type, — a  new  race.  Yet  we  may  be  sure 
that  forever  there  will  be  stamped  on  its  character  tho.se  grand 
prominent  traits  which  mark  the  Anglo-Saxon ;  that  as  our 
people  become  more  thoroughly  acclimated  there  will  be  a 
tendency  to  revert  to  the  parent  type;  and  that  there  will 
remain  an  abiding  and  it  may  well  be  an  ever  deepening  and 
strengthening  sense  of  true  kinship  with  the  older  portions  of 
the  race.  The  Greater  Britain  and  the  Greater  America  must 
have  many — very  many — things  in  common  in  their  future. 
And  surely  the  time  will  never  come,  no  matter  what  tem- 
porary differences  of  policy  may  arise,  when  the  very  magni- 
tude of  our  common  interests ;  when  the  interests  and  aspira- 
tions of  our  common  race ;  when  the  glorious  heritage  of  our 
common  possessions — our  language,  our  history,  our  heroes, 
our  law,  our  liberty,  civil  and  religious — will  not  make  us 
Americans  ready  as  now  to  gladly  pledge  '  England,  our 
Mother  Country.' 

"  We  had  hoped  to  have  with  us  to-night  one  who  through 
a  long  career  has  devoted  his  splendid  powers  and  his  inex- 

8 


58 

haustible  energy  to  the  sacred  cause  of  liberty,  political  and 
religious.  But  although  Mr.  Gladstone  is  unavoidably  absent, 
we  are  favored  with  the  presence  of  one  who  embodies  in  him- 
self in  a  peculiar  sense  all  that  could  entitle  him  to  reply  to 
this  toast  on  this  historic  occasion, — a  profound  scholar  and 
scientist ;  eminent  as  an  educator,  liberal  and  progressive  as  a 
statesman ;  endeared  to  all  by  his  services  in  the  cause  of  truth 
and  liberty,  and  yet  further  allied  to  America  by  the  closest 
ties  a  man  can  form. 

"  I  call  on  Rt.  Hon.  Sir  Lyon  Plavfair  to  respond  to  this 
toast  of  '  England,  our  Mother  Country.'  " 

Said  Sir  Lyon  Playfair, — 

"  Mr.  Chairman, — It  is  impossible  for  an  Englishman  to 
reply  without  emotion  to  a  toast  such  as  this,  or  without 
mingled  feelings  of  pride,  humiliation,  and  confidence.  With 
pride,  because  this  celebration  is  the  triumph  of  the  principles 
of  political  liberty  and  of  constitutional  government  of  a 
people  by  the  people,  in  entire  accord  with  the  great  traditions 
which  have  made  England  the  cradle  of  political  liberty. 
[Applause.]  With  humiliation,  because  England,  in  the  re- 
action which  followed  the  Cromwellian  revolution  and  which 
lasted  until  the  close  of  the  reign  of  George  III.,  forgot  many 
of  its  old  traditions,  and  in  its  relation  with  the  American 
colonies  tried  to  suppress  instead  of  foster  the  growth  of 
government  by  the  people.  With  confidence,  because  Eng- 
land and  the  United  States  now  know  that  they  are  the  chief 
guardians  of  political  liberty  and  constitutional  government 
throughout  the  world,  and  that  they  ought  to  be  linked  for 
evermore  by  the  bonds  of  friendship  and  kinsmanship.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

"  On  such  an  occasion  as  this  you  will  not  desire  that  I 
should  refer  to  the  political  blunders  of  England  which  led  to 


59 

the  wars  of  the  independence  and  of  1812.  In  our  present 
mood  you  would  rather  acknowledge  the  benefits  which  you 
have  received  from  the  mother  country  in  laying  the  founda- 
tions of  constitutional  government.  Your  ancestors  brought 
with  them,  as  their  most  precious  birthright,  the  principles  of 
constitutional  liberty.  The  Magna  Charta,  the  Habeas  Corpus 
Act,  the  Bill  of  Rights,  and  the  common  law  are  your  safe- 
guards for  liberty  as  they  are  our  safeguards  in  England. 

"  Cromwell  was  the  political  father  of  Washington,  because 
both  were  champions  of  individual  jyid  constitutional  liberty, 
and  they  both  taught  kings  that  government  can  only  secure 
permanent  obedience  when  it  consults  the  safety  and  happiness 
of  the  people.  The  acts  which  led  to  the  outbreak  at  Lexing- 
ton and  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  were  in  themselves  not  very 
oppressive,  but  they  were  a  continuation  of  slow  and  constant 
interference  with  the  natural  growth  of  constitutional  liberty. 
The  whole  country  uprose  after  the  final  tea-party,  which  was 
given  to  the  British  at  Griffin's  Wharf,  in  Boston,  because  the 
people  knew,  though  they  had  scarcely  felt  the  tyranny,  that 
the  mere  exposure  to  it  was  the  destruction  of  freedom. 

" '  For  what  avail  the  plough  or  sail 
Or  land  or  life,  if  freedom  fail  ?' 

"  How  I  wish  that  either  of  those  whom  I  am  proud  to  call 
my  friends,  William  Glad.stone  or  John  Bright  [cheers],  were 
here  to-day  to  reply  to  the  toast  now  given.  I  am  only  an 
humble  Englishman,  half  scientist,  half  politician,  with  no 
other  claim  to  address  you  than  the  fact  that  while  I  ardently 
love  my  own  country,  I  warmly  love  yours  also. 

"  I  .speak  in  a  city  which  framed  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence and  built  the  Constitution.  If  Boston  may  claim  the 
credit  of  infusing  fresh  blood  into  the  young  commonwealth, 
it  was  in  Philadelphia  that  its  brain  was  nurtured  and  matured. 


6o 

"  The  occasion  of  this  celebration,  the  place  and  all  its  en- 
vironments inspire  thoughts,  but  do  not  fit  them  for  condensa- 
tion into  an  after-dinner  speech.  I  shall  say  nothing  more  as 
to  your  War  of  Independence  beyond  this,  that  without  it  yoii 
would  never  have  become  a  great  nation.  Great  nations  must 
have  a  history,  and  that  war  created  history  for  you  and  gave 
you  illustrious  traditions  and  ancestors  of  your  own  to  whom 
you  can  point  with  pride  as  the  founders  of  your  fatherland. 
[Applause.] 

"  This  day  we  are  celebrating  your  second,  though  peaceful, 
revolution.  It  is  true  that  the  thirteen  States  had  become  a 
nation  by  a  loose  confederation.  Hut  that  nation,  though  of 
one  promise,  had  thirteen  performances,  and  no  nation  has  ever 
preserved  its  unity  with  even  two  executives.  It  was,  there- 
fore, a  veritable  revolution  when  the  Convention  of  1787  framed 
that  marvellous  production  of  human  genius,  political  foresight, 
and  practical  sagacity,— the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
Its  first  words, '  We,  the  people  of  the  United  States,'  not '  We, 
the  States,'  show  the  greatness  of  the  revolution.  It  was  as  if 
the  people  had  instructed  the  Convention  in  the  words  of 
Shakespeare,  '  We  must  have  liberty  withal,  as  large  a  Charter 
as  the  wind.'  The  Anglo-Sa.\on  spirit  breathes  through  every 
word  of  the  Constitution.  Notwithstanding  your  boundless 
and  continuous  territory,  its  framers  recollected  that  great  free 
nations  only  succeed  when  they  are  composed  of  smaller 
States,  because  there  is  a  longing  among  men  of  oui-  race  for 
local  independence  as  opposed  to  centralization.  With  what 
skill  and  wisdom  were  the  executive  powers  given  to  the 
nation  while  all  the  essentials  of  local  government  were  re- 
served to  the  States.  Ah,  there  were  intellectual  giants  in 
those  days.  When  will  you,  or  the  lovers  of  liberty  through- 
out the  world,  ever  forget  the  names  of  the  master  builders  of 
the  Constitution, — Washington,  Hamilton,  Sherman,  Madison, 


6r 

Pinckncy,  and  the  aged  Franklin  ?  It  does  not  lessen  but  it 
enhances  the  value  of  the  Constitution  that  the  best  parts  of 
English  constitutional  law  are  preserved  in  it  set  like  jewels  in 
a  golden  casket.  Hamilton  gloried  in  this  fact  at  a  later  time. 
And  so  the  Constitution,  both  in  its  inception  and  execution 
even  in  your  last  terrible  struggle  for  unity,  has  remained  the 
bright  polar  star  of  liberty.  When  I  think  of  it  I  feel  inclined 
to  exclaim,  in  the  words  of  Shakespeare,  '  How  beauteous 
mankind  is :  O,  brave  new  World  that  has  such  people  in't.' 

"  But,  in  speaking  of  the  object  of  this  celebration,  I  have 
left  but  a  few  moments  to  reply  to  the  sentiment  of  the  toast, 
'  Our  Mother  Country.'  The  people  of  the  United  States  as 
well  as  the  people  of  the  United  Kingdom  are  the  joint  and 
common  possessor  of  their  respective  glories  and  traditions. 

"  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Bacon,  and  Locke,  Burns,  Scott,  and 
Moore,  are  your  great  authors  as  they  are  ours.  When  I  see 
their  .statues  in  your  parks  or  museums  I  think  it  quite  as 
natural  as  when  I  .see  the  monument  of  Longfellow  in  West- 
minster Cathedral.  As  you  grow  older  in  history  our  great 
Walhalla  in  London  will  claim  its  right  to  possess  a  record 
and  share  in  the  illustrious  men  born  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  Even  now,  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Wendell  Holmes, 
and  Whittier  are  the  cherished  inmates  of  every  cultivated 
English  home.  Hume  and  Macaulay  teach  history  to  your 
schools  just  as  Prescott,  Motley,  and  Parkman  extend  his- 
torical knowledge  in  England.  Science  has  no  country,  though 
its  investigators  have  birthplaces.  In  Philadephia  I,  as  an  ex- 
professor,  cannot  forget  that  one  man  to  whom  all  my  life  I 
have  given  hero-worship  lived  and  labored  in  this  city.  In  his 
old  age  he  co-operated  with  Washington  to  humble  King 
George  III.  But  before  that  he  had  actually  swept  out  of  the 
universe  a  much  more  powerful  prince.  When  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin drew  down  lightning  from  the  clouds  he  freed  religion  from  a 


degrading  superstition.  Till  then  the  '  Prince  of  the  Power  of 
the  Air"  troubled  the  world  with  thunder-storms,  and  Popes 
blessed  bells  and  set  them  ringing  to  frighten  the  turbulent 
prince.  Franklin  was  more  powerful  than  the  Popes,  for  he 
knocked  the  prince  on  the  head, — 

"  '  Eripuit  ealo  fulmtn  sceptrumgut  tyratinis.^ 

"  Another  of  your  great  Americans,  Benjamin  Thompson 
(Count  Rumford),  taught  mankind  the  correlation  of  forces, 
and  founded  the  Royal  Institution  in  London,  which  has  pro- 
duced a  Davy,  a  Faraday,  and  a  Tyndall.  It  was  right  that  an 
Englishman  should  found  your  great  Smithsonian  Institution 
at  Washington. 

"  Long  may  wc  cherish  our  common  possessions  and 
national  sympathies.  When  America  rejoices  England  is 
glad.  When  you  mourn  a  great  national  calamity  we  join  in 
your  grief  When  Lincoln  and  Garfield  fell  by  the  acts  of 
assassins,  the  colors  of  English  ships  all  over  the  world  were 
lowered  '  half-mast'  in  honor  of  their  great  names.  At  the 
death  of  your  great  general.  Grant,  I  felt  I  was  with  you  in 
body  and  spirit  when  I  attended  the  solemn  services  at  West- 
minster Cathedral  in  commemoration  of  his  .services  to  your 
country  and  to  the  cause  of  liberty  throughout  the  world. 
When  Ireland,  unhappy  Ireland,  suffered  from  famine,  we  do 
not  forget  that  the  United  States  sent  over  a  frigate  laden  with 
provisions  for  the  starving  people.  Your  acts  of  sympathy 
with  us  in  our  joys  and  sorrows  have  been  many.  Let  us  con- 
tinue to  cherish  our  common  glories  and  past  traditions,  and 
never  cease  to  aim  at  a  community  of  interests  and  pride  in 
our  national  prosperity. 

"  It  is  no  insignificant  evidence  of  the  friendly  feeling  now- 
existing  between  England  and  the  United  States  that  a 
memorial,   signed   by   more   than   two   hundred   members   of 


63 

Parliament,  is  about  to  be  presented  to  the  President,  urging 
that  any  political  differences  which  may  from  time  to  time 
arise  between  the  two  countries  should  in  the  last  resort  be 
setded  by  arbitration.  This  memorial  is  the  actual  outcome 
of  the  workingmen  of  England,  who  have  pressed  it  upon 
their  representatives. 

"  I  know  that  I  have  been  far  too  long,  but  you  will  forgive 
me  because  the  toast  unites  two  great  nations  in  one  sentiment. 
The  small  islands  in  the  northern  seas  from  which  your  an- 
cestors came  to  found  this  great  nation  even  now  contain  only 
thirty-six  millions  of  people,  while  already  you  have  sixty 
millions,  and  have  in  your  vast  continent  an  immense  poten- 
tiality of  growth.  We  know  that  you  must  become  our  big 
brother,  and  we  ask  you  to  cherish  in  the  future  that  feeling  of 
pride  in  our  common  ancestry  and  that  sympathy  for  an  allied 
people  which  we  now  possess.  If  we  do  so  the  great  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  throughout  the  world  will  become  a  security  for 
peace  and  a  surety  for  the  continued  growth  of  Constitutional 
Liberty." 

Said  Provost  Pepper, — 

"  If  time  permitted,  it  would  be  pleasant  to  have  placed, 
instead  of  the  toast  which  is  now  to  be  offered,  a  series  em- 
bracing all  of  the  foreign  powers  which,  by  their  friendly  atti- 
tude during  and  after  the  Revolution,  did  so  much  to  cheer 
the  courage  and  strengthen  the  hands  of  the  struggling  nation. 
It  indicates  no  lack  of  grateful  remembrance  of  each  and  all 
of  them  that  we  have  felt  ourselves  restricted  to  a  special 
mention  of  that  one  power  which,  by  her  enthusiastic  sym- 
pathy, by  the  prestige  of  her  powerful  friendship,  by  her 
repeated  and  liberal  advances  of  money,  by  the  services  of  her 
gallant  sons,  contributed  so  influentially  to  our  success.  It 
would,  indeed,  be  strange  if,  on  such  an  occasion  as  this,  we 


64 

should  not  give  voice  to  the  deep  feelings  of  gratitude  which 
we  have  ever  continued  to  entertain  for  her, — a  gratitude 
heightened  by  the  enthusiastic  attachment  long  felt  for  the 
chivalrous  and  high-minded  Lafayette,  the  beloved  friend  of 
our  great  leader.  As  late  as  1824,  Everett  could  say,  address- 
ing Lafayette  at  Harvard  College,  '  that  he  had  returned  in 
his  age  to  receive  the  gratitude  of  the  nation  to  which  he 
devoted  his  youth,'  and  could  bid  him  '  enjoy  a  triumph  such 
as  never  conqueror  or  monarch  enjoyed,  the  assurance  that 
throughout  America  there  is  not  a  bosom  which  does  not  beat 
with  joy  and  gratitude  at  the  sound  of  his  name.'  Deeply  as 
Philadelphia  has  been  stirred  at  this  historic  time,  the  arrival 
of  Lafayette  in  this  city  evoked  an  almost  equal  enthusiasm. 
Nor  was  this  excessive  or  unwarranted,  because  it  was  uni- 
versally felt  that  in  him  were  symbolized  not  only  personal 
heroism  and  devotion  to  the  cause  of  human  liberty,  but  the 
generous  and  almost  fraternal  sentiments  and  conduct  of 
France  toward  us  at  the  most  critical  moment  in  our  history. 
It  is  a  most  felicitous  coincidence  that  we  are  favored  to-night 
by  the  presence  of  one  who  has  kindly  consented  to  respond 
to  the  toast  I  am  about  to  offer,  and  who  not  only  appears  as  a 
most  fitting  representative  of  France,  but,  through  family  ties, 
of  Lafeyette  also.  I  would  pledge,  therefore,  '  Fran'ce, — our 
Old  Ally,'  and  request  the  Marquis  de  Chambrun  to  reply 
to  this  toast." 

The  Marquis  de  Chambrun  said, — 

"  Mr.  President,  Ladies,  and  Gentlemen, — The  history  of 
the  alliance  between  the  United  States  and  France  is  in  some 
respects  a  very  curious  one.  A  solemn  treaty  was  signed  in 
1778  between  the  Court  of  Versailles  and  the  government  of 
the  insurgent  colonies ;  according  to  the  stipulations  con- 
tained therein,  France  sent  her  army  and  her  fleet  to  assist  the 


65 

thirteen  colonies  in  the  Revolutionary  War,  and  history  has 
recorded  with  what  success  this  determined  action  was  at- 
tended. But,  a  few  years  later,  when  the  government  of  France 
called  upon  the  United  States  to  execute  in  turn  its  obligations 
under  the  same  treaty,  President  Washington,  supported  by  the 
most  prominent,  the  most  patriotic  men  of  his  time,  declined  to 
comply  with  such  a  demand ;  he  asserted  the  international 
independence  of  the  United  States,  enforced  a  policy  of  ab- 
solute neutrality,  and  in  his  Farewell  Address  warned  his 
countrymen  against  a  policy  of  '  entangling  alliances.'  At 
first  blush  what  strange  contrast  this  change  of  faith  seems  to 
disclose.  Nevertheless,  France  so  well  appreciated  the  wisdom 
of  Washington  that,  in  1800,  the  First  Consul,  Bonaparte, 
assented  to  the  abrogation  of  the  Treaty  of  Alliance.  And  I 
may  say  that  to-day  an  examination  of  the  statute  books  show 
that  there  are  fewer  treaty  stipulations  in  force  between  the 
United  States  and  France  than  between  the  United  States  and 
Belgium,  for  instance. 

"  Nevertheless,  I  claim  that  there  is,  as  there  always  has 
been,  a  feeling  of  friendship  existing  between  the  two'  coun- 
tries which  is  above  and  beyond  the  scope  of  treaty  stipula- 
tions and  of  '  entangling  alliances.'  What  is  the  cause  of  it  ? 
The  cause  is  the  same  that  a  celebrated  moralist,  Pascal,  as- 
cribed to  love.  Pascal  said  that  love  could  not  exist  without 
a  '  linking  of  thoughts ;'  and  I  claim  that  as  between  France 
and  the  United  States  there  is  a  linking  of  thoughts.  [Ap- 
plause.] The  French  mind  was  the  first  in  Europe  which 
foresaw  what  this  continent  would  become,  it  was  also  the  first 
which  came  forward  to  assist  in  its  growth.  [Applause.] 
Here  let  me  quote  to  you  an  anecdote  which  I  do  not  believe 
has  ever  been  printed.  In  1800,  or  a  little  later,  General 
Lafayette  was  invited  to  a  state  dinner  given  by  General 
Bonaparte,   then    First   Consul.      At   that   state   dinner   were 

9 


66 

Moreau,  Massena,  and  nearly  all  those  generals  who  had  fought 
in  Europe  for  about  eight  years,  and  who  had  conquered  part  of 
it.  During  the  dinner  the  conversation  turned  upon  the  victories 
of  each  of  those  men.  General  Lafayette  remained  perfectly 
silent  until  Bonaparte  turned  to  him  and  .said, '  Why,  General 
I^fayette,  you  do  not  say  anything  about  your  campaigns  in 
America?  Please  speak  to  us  on  them.'  The  general, 
noticing  a  little  smile  of  derision  on  the  lips  of  the  generals 
who  had  just  spoken,  said,  '  I  will  not  allude,  Citizen  First 
Consul,  to  such  skirmishes,  though  these  skirmishes  have 
decided  the  fate  of  a  continent.'     [Applause.] 

"  I  say,  again,  that  no  European  thinkers  and  writers  have 
understood  American  institutions  so  well  as  the  French  have 
done.  I  ask  the  gentlemen  of  great  learning  who  are  here 
to-night  whether  there  is  a  more  philosophical  book,  a  more 
graphic  description  of  the  United  States  than  that  written  by 
Alexis  de  Tocqueville  under  the  title  of  '  Democracy  in 
America?"  Far  from  contradicting  what  a  distinguished 
Englishman  has  said  to-night,  I  agreed  with  him  when  he 
stated  that  as  between  you  and  England  there  is  the  tie  of 
the  Magna  Charta,  of  the  Habeas  Corpus,  the  '  linking  of 
thoughts,'  binding  together  both  countries,  the  writings  of 
Shakespeare  that  have  prepared  and  maintained  the  intellectual 
unity  of  all  the  English-speaking  people,  and  this  still  greater 
feet  that  England  has  produced  America. 

"  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  contend  on  behalf  of  France  that 
as  between  the  United  States  and  France  there  exi.st  these  very 
'  linking  of  thoughts'  that  resulted  in  both  countries  from  the 
application  of  such  democratic  principles,  of  such  ideas  of 
intellectual  freedom,  which  in  many  respects  unite  to-day  both 
nations  in  the  work  of  securing  the  moral,  the  intellectual,  and 
the  material  progress  of  the  people. 

"  My  friend,  if  he  will  allow  me  to  call  him  such,  General 


6; 

Sheridan,  spoke  of  the  Army  of  the  United  States  and  of  the 
possible  creation  of  an  army  of  millions  of  soldiers.  If  he 
will  allow  me  I  will  suggest  to  him  that  besides  these  millions 
of  armed  men  there  are  still  other  millions  of  soldiers  who  are 
continually  on  duty  in  this  country, — 1  refer  to  those  immense 
armies  of  pioneers  that  have  opened  the  West  and  created  new 
countries.  They  have  done  this  not  by  war,  not  at  the  cost  of 
human  lives,  but  by  the  most  legitimate,  the  most  honest,  and 
the  most  peaceful  means.  They  have  conquered  the  wilder- 
ness and  appropriated  it  to  the  uses  of  Christian  communities, 
so  that  to-day  millions  of  human  beings  are  thanking  God  for 
the  home  and  the  freedom  that  was  secured,  and  for  the  civiliza- 
tion that  was  bestowed  upon  them  under  the  Constitution  and 
under  the  laws  of  the  United  States. 

"  I  think  that  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  the 
most  perfectly-written  Constitution  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
To  test  it,  it  must  be  compared  with  three  other  Constitutions ; 
with  the  Constitution  of  Rome,  with  that  of  Venice,  and  with 
that  of  England.  So  long  as  Rome  maintained  her  liberty  she 
never  succeeded  in  casting  aside  the  privileges  of  a  few  fami- 
lies, and  when  the  idea  of  a  certain  equality  among  classes  and 
to  a  certain  extent  among  men  began  to  prevail  the  despotism 
of  the  emperors  had  suppressed  the  liberty  of  the  Roman  world. 

"  Venice  was  governed  for  five  hundred  years  by  a  close 
aristocracy. 

"  England  alone  has  transformed  her  institutions  by  the  slow 
process  of  reform  which  political  freedom  has  secured,  so  that 
she  is  nearing  every  day  the  very  principles  the  enforcement  of 
which  the  constitutions  of  the  various  States  of  America  and 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  secured  one  hundred 
years  ago  on  this  continent ;  and  let  me  express  this  sentiment, 
that  I  do  heartily  wish  that  these  very  principles  that  America 
has  first  asserted,  that  England  is  tending  to  recognize,  that 


68 

France  proclaimed  in  turn  ninety-eight  years  ago,  may  be  main- 
tained where  they  are  in  full  vigor,  may  be  developed  where 
they  are  asserting  themselves,  and  grow  where  they  are  hardly 
in  existence."     [Applause.] 

In  proposing  the  next  toast  Dr.  Pepper  said, — 
"  I  trust  that  all  here  would  have  felt  this  Centennial  Cele- 
bration to  have  been  .somewhat  incomplete  without  this  closing 
event  which  emphasizes  not  so  much  the  material  progress  we 
have  made,  nor  yet  the  material  forces  which  we  hold  in 
reserve ;  as  the  vast  power  which  education  exerts  among  us, 
and  the  rapid  development  which  has  been  effected,  under  the 
influence  of  our  free  institutions,  by  our  societies  for  the  pro- 
motion of  letters,  arts,  and  sciences.  It  is  the  wide  diffusion 
of  education  in  America  which,  more  than  anything  else,  has 
made  possible  the  successful  adaptation  of  the  Constitution  to 
every  phase  of  our  national  life.  It  is  to  the  continued  exten- 
sion of  education,  conjoined  with  the  holy  teachings  of  religion, 
that  we  look  with  confidence  as  the  means  by  which  all 
threatened  dangers  to  our  system  of  government  shall  be 
averted.  I  beg,  therefore,  to  propose  the  toast  of  '  American 
Kducatiun,'  and  to  call  for  a  response  from  Hon.  Andrew  D. 
White,  Ex-President  of  Cornell  University  and  formerly  Min- 
ister to  the  Court  of  Berlin,  one  of  our  most  distinguished 
educators,  and  an  admirable  example  of  the  value  of  the 
scholar  in  public  life." 

Mr.  White  said, — 

"  Mr.  Provost, — Nothing  could  seem  at  first  sight  more 
remote  from  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  than  the 
present  growth  of  American  education. 

"  A  vast  growth  it  is,  indeed,  with  its  schools  numbered  by 
hundreds  of  thousands,  from  the  log  cabin  of  our  frontiers  to 


69 

the  stately  edifices  of  our  universities,  with  millions  on  millions 
of  scholars  of  every  grade,  with  hundreds  of  millions  of  money 
lavished  upon  it  by  the  nation,  the  States,  the  municipalities, 
the  rural  hamlets,  and  with  a  growth  of  private  munificence 
such  as  the  world  has  never  before  seen :  and  yet  not  a  word 
in  the  Constitution  provides  for  this  growth  or  even  foreshadows 
it.  And  still  it  would  not  be  hard  to  prove,  first,  that  when  the 
Constitution  had  been  framed  a  vast  educational  development 
must  follow  normally  and  logically,  and  it  would  be  still  more 
easy  to  prove,  next,  that  this  great  growth  of  education  must 
take  substantially  its  present  form  and  no  other. 

"  For,  sir,  what  is  the  central  and  germinating  force  in  this 
great  educational  evolution  ?  Inherited  ideas,  the  zeal  of  sects, 
the  ambition  of  localities,  the  pride  or  patriotism  of  individuals 
have  doubtless  contributed  much,  yet  they  explain  but  a  small 
part  of  it.  What  is  the  cause  underlying  a  growth  so  deep,  so 
broad,  so  vigorous  ? 

"  My  answer  is  that  it  is  an  instinct — an  instinct  developed 
out  of  a  conviction — an  instinct  and  conviction  growing  ever 
more  and  more — that,  without  adequate  provision  /or  the  educa- 
tion and  enlightenment  of  the  great  majority  of  our  citizens, 
we  have  no  .security  for  the  maintenance  of  this  vast  complex 
of  institutions,  and  especially  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  which  is  their  radiant  centre. 

"  The  thoughtful  observer  of  human  histoiy  knows  that  this 
instinct  is  well  founded ;  he  knows  that  all  the  great  republics 
of  antiquity  and  of  the  mediaeval  period  failed  for  want  of  that 
enlightenment  which  could  enable  their  citizens  to  appreciate 
free  institutions  and  maintain  them.  He  knows,  too,  that  most 
of  the  great  efforts  for  republican  institutions  in  modern  times 
have  been  drowned  in  unreason,  fanaticism,  anarchy,  and  blood, 
— nay,  he  knows,  even  as  to  republics  which  are  to-day  suc- 
cessful, that  unenlightened  political  conduct  subjects  them  to 


70 

the  greatest  dangers  at  home,  and  gives  force  and  point  to 
the  arguments  of  their  enemies  abroad. 

"  I  am  aware  that  many  have  claimed  that  a  special  divine 
illumination  or  inspiration  is  possessed  by  political  aggregations 
of  the  human  species  ;  that  there  is  in  such  great  bodies,  when 
the)'  come  to  discuss  political  subjects,  an  inerrancy,  an  infalli- 
bilit)',  which  prevents  their  going  far  wrong.  This  doctrine 
takes  shape  in  the  famous  declaration  that  the  '  voice  of  the 
people  is  the  voice  of  God.'  In  one  sense  history  shows  this 
statement  to  be  true,  for  the  voice  of  any  people,  whose  God- 
given  powers  of  mind,  heart,  and  soul  have  not  been  properly 
developed,  has  ever  been  the  voice  of  an  avenging  God  against 
human  unreason.  The  voice  of  an  illiterate  people  made 
Marcus  Aurelius  and  Philip  II.  more  popular  than  Charles  V.; 
Ferdinand,  of  Austria,  more  popular  than  Joseph  II. ;  Henry 
VIII.  and  Charles  II.,  of  England,  more  popular  than  William 
III., — nay,  does  not  every  child  know  that  Harabbas  was  more 
popular  than  Jesus  ?  An  illiterate  mass  of  men,  large  or  small, 
is  a  mob.  If  such  a  mob  has  a  hundred  million  of  heads;  if 
.it  extends  from  ice  to  coral,  it  is  none  the  less  a  mob,  and 
the  voice  of  a  mob  has  been  in  all  time  evil,  for  it  has  ever 
been  the  voice  of  a  tyrant,  conscious  of  power,  unconscious 
of  responsibility. 

"  There  are  many,  also,  who  attribute  to  a  Constitution  so 
revered  as  ours  a  sort  of  magic  force  to  restrain  the  wilder  ele- 
ments of  liberty ;  but,  after  all,  what  constitution  shall  curb 
the  despotism  of  a  mob  ?  The  despotism  of  an  individual 
may  be,  and  has  been,  tempered  by  assassins,  by  epigrams,  by 
historians,  by  a  sense  of  responsibility ;  but  how  shall  any  such 
forces,  how  shall  any  sense  of  responsibility,  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  a  mob  ?  It  passes  at  one  bound  from  extreme  credulity 
towards  demagogues  to  extreme  scepticism  towards  statesmen ; 
from  mawkish  sympathy  for  criminals  to  blood-thirsty  ferocity 


71 

ajjainst  the  innocent ;  from  the  wildest  rashness  to  the  most 
abject  fear.  To  rely  upon  a  constitution  to  control  such  a  mob 
would  be  like  relying  upon  a  cathedral  organ  to  still  the  fury 
of  a  tornado.  Build  your  Constitution  as  lordly  as  you  may, 
let  its  ground  tone  of  justice  be  the  most  profound,  let  its 
utterances  of  human  right  be  trumpet-tongucd,  let  its  combi- 
nations of  checks  and  balances  be  the  most  subtle ;  yet  what 
statesman  shall  so  play  upon  its  mighty  keys  as  to  still  the 
howling  tempest  of  party  spirit,  or  .sectional  prejudice,  or  race 
hatreds,  sweeping  through  an  illiterate  mob  crowding  a  con- 
tinent ? 

"  And,  finally,  it  is  said  that  a  nation  is  educated  to  freedom 
by  events  and  institutions.  That  is  largely  true ;  but  the  ques- 
tion is  a  question  of  price.  The  price  of  political  education 
in  a  nation  without  intellectual  and  moral  training  is  large  in- 
deed. It  is  generally  centuries  of  time  and  oceans  of  blood 
and  treasure.  Think  of  the  price  paid  for  religious  liberty 
in  Germany,  for  civil  liberty  in  England,  for  political  liberty 
in  France,  for  national  unity  everywhere. 

"  The  great  masses  of  our  people  may  not  be  able  to  give  all 
the  elaborate  reasons  for  their  conviction  that  widespread  edu- 
cation is  a  necessity,  but  these  reasons  have  filtered  down 
through  them,  and  in  the  conviction  and  instinct  thus  created 
resides  the  strength  of  American  education. 

"  So  much,  sir,  for  the  indirect  relation  of  the  Constitution 
to  education.  I  come  now  to  its  direct  effect  in  giving  to 
American  education  its  present  form.  It  was  the  boast  of  a 
mini.ster  of  public  instruction  in  one  of  the  greatest  European 
.states  that,  at  whatever  hour  in  the  day  he  opened  his  watch, 
he  knew  exactly  what  study  was  at  that  time  occupying  the 
attention  of  every  scholar  in  that  empire.  Under  the  political 
.system  established  by  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
no  such  boast  can  ever  be  possible.     No  autocrat  or  bureau- 


72 

crat  or  mandarin  can  ever  thus  confiscate  the  developing 
thought  of  the  nation  to  the  ambition  of  any  sect,  party,  or 
individual. 

"  Among  the  most  profound  remarks  ever  made  by  that  great 
thinker,  John  Stuart  Mill,  is  his  statement  that  one  of  the 
greatest  misfortunes  in  the  education  of  a  nation  would  be  the 
establishment  of  uniformity  under  the  name  of  unity ;  that  in 
the  best  national  education  there  will  be  freedom  to  many  sys- 
tems, thus  preventing  mandarinism  and  stagnation,  thus  insur- 
ing that  attrition  between  the  minds  of  men  educated  to  ap- 
proach truth  from  various  sides,  and  to  state  truth  in  various 
ways,  which  is  the  best  guarantee  for  the  healthful  and  per- 
petual development  of  the  national  thought. 

"  This  ideal  of  a  national  education  the  Constitution  has 
insured  to  us.  In  the  whole  system  there  is  subtantial  unity 
but  no  uniformity.  Each  State,  each  municipality,  every  in- 
dividual has  the  largest  freedom  to  work  out  the  best  results. 
Especially  true  is  this  of  the  higher  education,  and,  though  to 
a  superficial  observer  the  whole  system  is  chaotic,  the  closer 
thinker  will  see  a  great  cosmic  force  shaping  the  whole  and 
developing  a  complete  well-grounded  system,  growing  with  the 
growth  and  strengthening  with  the  strength  of  the  Republic. 
Of  good  omen  is  it,  too,  that  the  higher  education  throughout 
our  country  is  occupying  itself  with  the  study  of  social  and 
political  problems  as  never  before,  and  that  more  and  more  are 
coming  from  our  universities  men  who,  in  the  light  of  the  best 
modern  thought,  can  discuss  the  most  important  problems 
arising  in  this  second  century  of  the  Constitution, — through 
the  press,  from  the  pulpit  and  professor's  chair,  and  in  the 
halls  of  legislation.  Especially  noteworthy  is  the  noble  exam- 
ple set  in  the  devolpment  of  these  studies  by  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania. 

"At  the  centre  of  the  whole,  Congress  has  established  a 


73 

Bureau  of  Education.  This  would  seem  the  logical  outcome 
of  our  system, — not  its  lord  but  its  servant,  keeping  as  it 
were  the  standard  time  of  the  whole,  recording  the  best  results 
of  experiments  here  and  there,  enabling  all  to  profit  by  the 
example  of  each  and  each  to  profit  by  the  example  of  all,  but 
without  a  particle  of  power  to  impose  a  central  will.  It  may, 
indeed,  be  said  that  in  the  whole  growth  of  American  educa- 
tion there  is  much  boastful  immaturity.  This  is  true,  but  im- 
maturity in  a  living  organism  means  growth,  and  whatever 
boastfulness  there  may  be  is  but  a  sign  of  growth,  robust, 
luxuriant — not  exotic,  but  prophetic  of  strength  and  long 
service. 

"  It  is  true,  also,  that  this  growth  is  not  what  many  good 
men  would  have  it.  Some  would  have  a  vast  system  of 
primary  schools  and  nothing  more,  some  would  stop  with  high 
schools  and  intermediate  colleges,  some  would  care  for  nothing 
save  the  universities. 

"  But  the  very  laws  of  growth  in  the  whole  system  bring  all 
such  narrow  views  to  naught.  For  in  this  whole  living  growth 
of  American  education  the  public  schools  are  the  roots, — push- 
ing deeply  and  broadly  among  the  whole  people  and  drawing  in 
life  from  them  ;  the  academies  and  high  schools  are  the  stalwart 
trunk,  rising  strong  from  the  roots  and  binding  the  whole 
growth  in  unity ;  and  the  universities,  now  beginning  to  spread 
broadly  forth,  are  its  boughs  and  branches  bearing  its  foliage 
and  bloom  and  fruitage, — gathering  in  light  and  life  and  a.spira- 
tion  from  what  is  best  in  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  world's 
science  and  literature  and  art ;  bringing  it  to  circulate  back 
through  trunk  and  root,  repaying  what  it  has  drawn  from  the 
people  by  new  currents  of  ennobling  and  strengthening  thought 
and  endeavor. 

"  As  well  try,  then,  to  cultivate  a  vast  oak  in  hope  of  having 
it  all  root,  or  all  trunk,  or  all  foliage,  as  to  create  a  worthy 

lO 


74 

system  of  American  education  without  these  three  divisions  of 
the  organic  whole. 

"  In  the  atmosphere  diffused  by  this  growth  of  American 
education  we  may  have  confidence  that  the  Constitution  will 
go  on  as  a  blessing  to  century  after  century, — that  it  will  enable 
us  to  regard  this  ever-growing  mass  of  citizens  with  assured 
hope  of  prosperity  and  to  look  into  the  faces  of  its  soldiers 
without  fear  for  liberty.  We  may  have  confidence  that  the 
foundations  of  the  Constitution  will  grow  ever  firmer  in  the 
right  reason  of  the  people  ;  that  its  mighty  buttres.ses  will  grow 
ever  stronger  in  enlightened  patriotism ;  that  the  mists  of  fac- 
tion which  ignorance  would  throw  around  it  shall  be  more  and 
more  dispelled  until  it  shall  stand  in  splendor  unobscured,  ray- 
ing forth  justice  and  freedom  to  all  the  nations  of  the  earth." 

The  Chairman, — 

"  I  am  sure  that  all  who  have  enjoyed  the  splendid  ceremo- 
nies of  these  three  days  will  gladly  join  in  the  toast  I  am 
about  to  propose.  But  did  all  know — as  we  do  who  have  been 
able  to  watch  closely  the  long  and  anxious  and  skilful  labor 
needed  to  secure  the  well-nigh  perfect  result — they  would 
pledge,  in  the  fullest  bumpers  of  the  evening,  '  The  Centen- 
nial Commission  and  their  Associates,'  to  whose  devoted 
and  self-sacrificing  exertions  the  country  owes  the  success  of 
this  great  celebration.  I  beg  to  call  on  Hon.  John  A.  Kasson, 
of  Iowa,  the  President  of  the  Commission,  for  a  response." 

He  said, — 

"  Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen, — There  is  little  need  to 
interpret  the  purpose  of  the  Commission  in  the  celebration 
which  has  just  closed.  All  who  have  listened  to  the  speeches 
here  to-night  must  be  convinced  that  the  demonstration  of  the 
three  days  has  made  one  impression  upon  the  hearts  of  every 


75 

lover  of  our  country  from  tlic  North  and  South,  Mast  and 
West. 

"  We  had,  indeed,  a  moral  object  in  this  celebration.  At  the 
end  of  a  century  of  enormously  augmented  riches  the  time  had 
come,  in  our  judgment,  to  remind  each  true  son  of  America — 

"'Thou  wast  not  m-ide  for  lucre, 
For  pleasure  nor  for  rest. 
Thou  that  art  sprung  from  Freedom's  loins 
And  lipped  thy  milk  from  War's  stern  breast.' 

On  no  previous  occasion  had  there  been  a  special  effort  to 
a.ssemble  representatives  of  all  orders  and  classes,  and  from  all 
parts  of  the  country  with  a  view  to  harmony  of  feeling  and 
purpose.  And  we  thought  on  this  occasion  that  the  North  and 
East,  the  South  and  West,  the  common  people,  the  rich  and 
poor,  the  religious  and  secular,  scientific  and  artistic,  politicians 
of  all  loyal  colors,  in  a  word,  that  every  element  of  national 
progress  should  be  put  upon  one  footing,  one  common  ground, 
where  all  loyal  people  of  this  country  could  stand ;  which 
ground  was  the  very  foundation  of  their  liberties  and  their 
prosperity.  To  emphasize  their  constitutional  devotion  we 
summoned  also  the  descendants  of  the  Fathers  of  our  country, 
of  the  great  names  of  the  Revolution,  and  invited  them  to 
come  and  witness  the  popular  devotion  to  the  chartered  liber- 
ties which  their  ancestors  had  established.  Many  of  them 
came,  and  recalled  with  fitting  pride  the  memories  of  their 
Fathers. 

"  God  grant  that  our  efforts  may  not  have  resulted  in  a  vain 
show.  You  have  heard  the  sentiments  which  have  been  ex- 
pressed by  the  representatives  of  the  South,  the  North,  the 
East,  and  the  West  to-night ;  and  I  hear  it  of  one  representa- 
tive from  the  distant  South,  that  before  he  came  to  Philadelphia 
he  had  doubted  whether  this  Constitution  would  stand  another 


76 

hundred  years.  He  should  return  feehng  that  its  existence 
would  not  be  limited  by  the  year  1987,  but  that  centennials  of 
its  creation  might  be  celebrated  upon  their  recurrence  here- 
after from  century  to  century.  Mr.  President,  we  feel  gratified 
at  this  and  other  like  testimony  to  the  morals  inspired  by  our 
national  festivities.  Interpreting  the  sentiments  of  the  Com- 
mission, I  need  only  .say  that  we  acknowledge,  with  gratitude, 
the  sympathetic  and  important  aid  which  we  have  received 
from  all  the  country,  and  especially  from  the  people  of  your 
city.  We  heartily  express  our  wish  that  Philadelphia  may  find 
at  the  Centennial  one  hundred  years  hence  all  parts  of  the 
continent  joj-ously  represented,  and  all  animated  by  increased 
fervor  and  devotion  to  the  interests  of  the  Union  and  the  Con- 
stitution."    [Applause.] 

The  CiiAiKMAS, — 

"  It  is  unnecessary  to  preface  by  any  words  of  mine  the  last 
toast  of  this  evening,  since  it  was  offered  one  hundred  years 
ago  at  that  memorable  dinner  to  which  allusion  has  already 
been  made  more  than  once.  I  beg  you  to  join  with  me  in  the 
sentiment,  '  Honor  and  Immortality  to  the  Members  of 
THE  Federal  Convention  of  1787,'  to  which  Hon.  Henrv 
M.  Hoyt,  of  Pennsylvania,  will  respond." 

He  said, — 

"  Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen, — The  last  act  of  the 
week's  pageant  has  been  performed.  The  last  blare  of  the 
trumpet  has  been  silenced  and  the  tread  of  freemen  is  no 
longer  heard  on  our  streets.  The  issues  of  a  century  of 
political  and  social  life  have  been  displayed  in  your  pres- 
ence. 

"  The  time  has  come  for  the  last  word  to  be  spoken.  The 
hour  admonishes  us  that  this  word  should  be  short.     Yet  the 


17 

pious  gravity  of  the  sentiment  you  propose  demands  more  than 
the  momentary  consideration  we  can  give  it, — 

" '  Honor  and  immortality  to  the  members  of  the  Federal 
Convention  of  1787.' 

"  These  were  the  large  and  stately  words  with  which  the 
verdict  of  futurity  was  invoked  upon  the  actors  in  the  work 
just  then  completed  and  accepted  by  a  body  of  citizens  as- 
sembled, as  you  are,  in  thoughtful  and  patriotic  festivities. 

"This  solemn  appeal  to  the  judgment  of  mankind  has  now 
been  in  the  air  for  a  hundred  years.  This  prophetic  sub- 
mission of  the  fame  of  these  men  to  the  coming  ages  has 
reverberated  through  the  ears  of  all  men  everywhere,  and  now, 
at  the  end  of  a  century,  returns  to  us  as  no  empty  echo. 
This  brave  challenge  of  their  historical  fate,  in  the  final  sum- 
mary which  posterity  will  make,  then  reverently  risked  in  the 
terms  of  hope,  we  now  accept  in  the  terms  of  accomplished 
fact. 

"  Who  were  these  men  ? 

"  Taken  individually,  they  were  large-minded,  sincere,  and 
brave  men,  who  led  honorable  and  honored  lives  among  their 
fellows,  and  at  the  end  descended  into  modest  and,  in  some 
instances,  obscure  graves.  The  whole  earth  is  now  their 
sepulchre.  We  need  not  follow  their  personal  fortunes.  Our 
reverent  duty  to  them  is  as  'members  of  the  Convention  of 
1787.' 

"What,  gentlemen,  did  this  group  of  men,  less  than  half  a 
hundred  in  number,  what  did  they  do  which  had  not  been 
done  by  their  predecessors  in  the  aforetime?  What  was  the 
precise  work  which  they  wrought,  upon  which  we  now,  in  the 
year  of  grace,  1887,  predicate  with  such  absoluteness,  '  honor 
and  immortality  ?' 

"  Surely  the  idea  of  civil  liberty  was  not  a  new  one  in  their 
day.     An  older  group  of  Englishmen,  who,  five  hundred  years 


78 

before,  had  put  the  clamps  on  King  John,  their  feudal  over- 
lord, had  not  escaped  the  sweep  of  their  historic  survey.  This 
group  had  asserted  and  defined  forever  the  fundamental  personal 
rights  of  life,  liberty,  and  property.  '  Magna  Charta  and  all 
our  statutes,'  says  Sir  Edward  Coke,  '  are  absolute  and  without 
any  saving  of  sovereign  power.  Magna  Charta  is  such  a  fellow 
that  he  will  have  no  sovereign.' 

"A  hundred  years  before,  in  1688,  these  same  English  for- 
bearers  had  taught  the  final  lesson  oi  cottstitutional  got'crnment, — 
the  institution  built  on  the  supremacy  of  certain  fixed  principles, 
— 'the  true,  ancient,  and  indubitable  rights  of  Englishmen.' 

"  Precedents  already  existed  of  a  government  of  the  people 
by  the  people.  Perhaps  its  .solution  did  not  stand  out  clear 
and  distinct,  but  this  problem  had  already  been  partly  solved. 
It  is  to  be  reckoned  among  the  beatitudes  which  have  de- 
scended upon  the  authors  of  the  Constitution  of  1787,  that 
their  constituencies — the  husbandmen  strung  along  the  Atlantic 
coast — were  a  free,  proud,  self-respecting  people  who  rightly 
conceived  their  rights.  In  their  profound  consciousness  of  the 
infinite  destiny  of  humanity,  they  had  already,  in  their  daily 
lives,  exercised  the  politUal  pmccr  necessary  to  protect  their 
personal  rights  against  any  merely  human  authority  which  they 
themselves  had  not  set  up.  Their  corporate  thought,  definitely 
apprehended,  only  needed  the  wise  and  skilful  formulation  in 
clear-cut  phrase,  which  it  received  at  the  hands  of  these  faithful 
trustees  of  human  interests. 

"  Human  interests  were  presented  in  new  aspects  and  with 
new  possibilities  to  the  group  of  men  of  whom  we  speak. 
They  had  not  ignorantly  generalized  the  facts  of  history.  The 
career  of  Athens,  under  its  democracy,  will  always  fill  some  of 
the  brightest  and  freshest  pages  in  the  annals  of  the  race.  Yet 
that  was  a  government  by  the  citizens  of  a  single  city.  The 
pride   and    passion    of    mere   citizenship   has,   perhaps,   never 


79 

reached  the  height  attained  in  the  democracy  of  Kleisthenes 
and  Pericles.  Students  of  constitutional  history  lament  the 
failure  of  the  Greek  to  have  enlarged  his  idea  of  nationality  so 
as  to  include  the  fortunes  of  all  Hellenes.  The  Macedonian 
soldier  made  an  easy  conquest  of  the  splendid  but  warring 
cities  whose  statesmen  had  never  reached  the  conception  of 
a  Federal  Union  of  free  cities  having  the  same  ideals  and 
aspirations.  The  group  of  philosophers  and  orators  who 
moved  the  Ekklcsia,  and  whose  words  still  move  us,  did  not,  at 
last,  present  an  object-lesson  from  which  the  members  of  the 
Convention  of  1787  could  gather  many  maxims  of  practical 
conduct. 

"  But,  after  the  Macedonian  conquest,  another  group  of  men 
did  arise  in  Greece  who  did  reach  the  Federal  idea  and  under- 
took to  appropriate  it.  The  Achaian  League  furnishes  us  with 
the  first  and  most  instructive  lesson  in  the  form  of  Confederated 
States.  This  league  is  the  great  exemplar  of  our  own  Union  of 
Republics,  and  its  analogies  were  widely  sought  and  discussed 
in  its  formation.  The  idea  of  a  federal  union  is  a  subtle  and 
artificial  one,  and  has  only  been  attained  three  or  four  times  in 
the  history  of  the  human  family.  Markos,  Aratos,  and  their 
group,  the  authors  of  the  Achaian  League,  missed  the  point  of 
sovereignty,  divided  in  balanced  and  harmonious  measure  be- 
tween the  separate  States  and  the  League.  It  was  reserved 
to  the  members  of  the  Convention  of  1787  to  disentangle  the 
refinements  of  the  dual  sovereignty,  and  devise,  for  the  first 
time,  a  frame  of  government  which,  while  conceding  the  abso- 
lute municipal  freedom  and  sovereignty  of  the  States,  should, 
at  the  same  time,  lead  the  people — the  people  of  the  whole 
nation — up  to  the  exercise  and  performance  of  acts  of  smwr- 
eignty,  original,  and,  in  certain  spheres,  unlimited. 

"This  sounds  commonplace  to  us.  It  is,  however,,  of  the 
essence  of  the  work  of  the  members  of  the  Convention  of 


8o 

1787.  It  would  unworthily  become  us  to  forget  that  our 
fathers  borrowed  something  from  the  Confederation  of  the 
Swiss  Cantons,  upon  which  the  Alpine  heights  have  for  ages 
shed  the  light  of  freedom,  whose  organizing  power  and  unify- 
ing inspiration  found  their  centre  at  Geneva.  Nevertheless,  it 
remains  true  that  the  Constitution  of  1787  is  the  most  com- 
plete compact  between  free  and  equal  States  which  has  yet 
issued  from  the  hand  of  man.  Whether  consciously  wrought 
or  not,  it  has  stood  the  practical  test  of  two  foreign  wars.  Our 
Civil  War  has  served  to  renew  and  energize  the  sense  of  tiation- 
ality  which  that  Constitution,  as  it  left  the  hands  of  its  framcrs, 
brought  into  existence.  We  now  know  that  the  continent  is 
not  broad  enough  to  hold  the  warring  legions,  nor  the  free  air 
expansive  enough  to  contain  the  hostile  banners  of  a  race,  one 
in  lineage,  one  in  aspirations,  and  one  in  destiny. 

"  Everything  which  came  down  to  these  men  out  of  the  past, 
in  any  way  touched  with  human  interest,  underwent  a  clarify- 
ing and  perfecting  process  at  their  hands.  They  reduced  to 
plain  and  easy  propositions  the  wild  speculations,  and  the 
vague  and  rhetorical  declamation  over  the  rights  of  man  with 
which  that  other  group  of  proijagandists — the  I-'ncyclopedists 
— were,  during  the  eighteenth  century,  inflaming  the  minds  of 
France.  These  Saxons  handed  back  to  their  Latin  brethren 
their  problem — solved. 

"  Our  own  great  group — the  group  of  1787,  bearing  the  names 
of  Weishington  and  Hamilton  in  their  front — now  take  their 
places  at  the  head  of  the  column  of  immortals.  These  men  tnade 
a  g(n<ernment,  self-poised,  self-preserving,  everlasting,  we  may 
believe. 

"  A  great  nation  has  more  than  the  mere  legal  or  political 
side  of  its  life.  There  is  the  mighty  congeries  of  activities 
which  constitute  its  entire  civic  and  social  life.  The  Constitution 
of  1787  does  something  more  than  define  the  relation  of  the 


States  to  the  sovereignty  which  that  Constitution  creates.  Our 
fathers  did  not  intend  to  state  a  mere  metaphysical  puzzle,  over 
which  we  were  to  go  on  forever  chopping  our  vicious  logic. 
That  Constitution  lays  down  and  secures  the  entire  body  of 
rights  under  which  all  individuals  unite  in  the  pursuit  of  their 
happiness,  and  of  those  common  aims  of  society  which  consti- 
tute what  we  call  our  civilization.  Under  it  we  exercise  the 
vast  energies,  and,  by  virtue  of  its  shield,  we  organize  the  vast 
industries  and  conduct  the  vast  enterprises  which  make  us  a 
nation, — one  people,  something  very  different  from  the  simple 
sum  of  units,  whether  individuals  or  States,  composing  it.  In 
this  aspect  of  the  Constitution  of  1787  we  may  contemplate  it 
as  containing  the  final  form  of  a  human  compact  under  which 
all  nations  may  unite  in  a  common  federal  bond. 

"  Thus,  after  the  voices  of  the  orators  in  the  Pnyx  had  for 
twenty  centuries  been  silenced  by  the  imperialism  of  Caesars, 
and  strangled  by  the  sacerdotal  absolutism  of  the  Vatican, — 
'  the  ghost  of  the  old  Roman  empire  sitting  on  the  grave 
thereof,' — the  voices  of  these  men  recalled  awakened  humanity 
to  their  rightful  possessions  and  dignity.  Demos  again  became 
king,  to  remain  enthroned  forever. 

"  Thus,  after  a  struggle,  which  for  two  thousand  years  had 
thwarted  the  efforts  of  Europe  to  find  out  how  to  reverse  the 
edicts  of  tyrants,  the  rescripts  of  emperors,  and  the  decretals 
of  pontiffs,  this  group  of  plain  statesmen  and  philosophers  in 
America  stripped  these  bonds  from  their  limbs,  and,  emerging 
into  the  welcome  sunlight  of  liberty  and  toleration,  from  the 
supreme  heights  they  had  gained,  defined  to  the  right  reason 
and  wrote  into  the  literature  of  the  race  the  forms  and  limita- 
tions of  organic  law  which  freemen  may  be  willing  to  impose 
on  themselves. 

"Thus,  at  last,  the  long  reign  of  sterile  scholasticism  and 
infertile  dogma  was  broken.     The  oppressive  and  degrading 


82 

parenthesis  of  the  dark  ages,  in  which  all  intellect  had  been 
locked  up,  was  at  an  end.  The  basis  of  human  thought  was 
transformed.  One  of  the  great  forward  movements  of  the 
world  was  started. 

"And,  thus,  the  Philadelphia  of  1787  became  the  climax  of 
the  Runnymede  of  121 5, — the  one  as  the  definition  and  asser- 
tion of  the  essential  rights  of  man,  as  man ;  the  other,  as  the 
mechanism  for  their  security  and  the  Ark  of  the  preservation 
of  free  institutions. 

"  But,  gentlemen,  before  parting  with  you,  and  remanding 
you  to  the  fate  which  must  overtake  us  all  in  the  course  of  the 
next  hundred  years,  I  plead  a  moment  in  which  I  may  speak 
to  you  from  my  stand-point,  as  a  citizen  of  Pennsylvania  and 
its  metropolis,  the  city  of  Philadelphia. 

"  We  have  always  held  ourselves  ready  to  extend  such  hos- 
pitalities to  the  friends  of  the  Republic  as  our  resources  per- 
mitted. We  have  dedicated  our  halls  and  our  streets,  our  hearth- 
stones and  our  hearts,  to  the  service  of  the  friends  of  constitu- 
tional liberty.  From  the  days  which  really  tried  men's  souls, 
out  of  which  emerged  in  1776  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence— through  the  uncertain  crisis  when  the  delegates  of  the 
people  were  here  in  1787  endeavoring  to  formulate  their 
thoughts — in  the  glad  Centennial  Exhibition  in  1876  of  the 
fruits  of  a  first  century's  progress, — up  to  this  crowning  display  in 
1887  of  a  people's  power  and  happiness,  we  have  endeavored  to 
respond  to  every  impulse  which  embodied  the  national  purpose. 
When,  a  hundred  years  hence,  our  successors  come  here,  as 
they  will,  let  them  read  the  memorial  we  now  set  up,  of  our  hom- 
age to  the  men  who  framed  our  Constitution.  Let  them  find  the 
pledges,  which  we  now  renew,  of  our  eternal  constancy  and 
fidelity  to  the  work  of  our  fathers  and  to  the  principles  which 
they  made  immortal.  When,  a  hundred  years  hence,  our 
children  place  a  mightier  pageant  on  these  streets,  as  they  will, 


«3 

let  them  find  that  we  lia\c  dedicated  to  their  uses,  for  their 
glory  and  happiness,  all  the  resources  of  science  and  industry, 
literature  and  art,  culture  and  conscience  which  may  illustrate 
the  power  of  a  free  people  and  adorn  the  annals  of  a  State 
whose  escutcheon  bears  the  words,  '  Virtue,  Liberty,  and  Inde- 
pendence.' May  they  find  the  people  everywhere  seated  on 
the  throne  of  true  power.  May  they  solve  the  social  problems 
yet  outstanding  on  the  lines  laid  down  by  the  single-minded 
men  whom  we  now  commemorate. 

"  They  left  a  Constitution  capable  of  taking  up  all  human 
interests  so  long  as  the  people  possess  constitutional  morality 
enough  to  defend  and  preserve  it.  Pennsylvania  contributed 
eight  signers  to  that  instrument.  The  people  behind  them 
promptly  ratified  their  work.  They  have  had  no  misgivings 
about  it  since.  We  desire  no  separate  existence  as  a  State. 
We  never  had  a  scheme  or  a  purpose  which  we  could  not  exe- 
cute to  the  full,  in  virtue  of  our  membership  in  this  Union.  So 
long  as  our  mountain  peaks  point  to  the  heavens,  and  so  long 
as  our  rivers  flow  to  the  sea,  we  shall  render  our  supreme 
allegiance  to  the  United  States  of  America.  God  help  us  so  to 
do."     [Applause.] 

Continuous  calls  being  made  for  Ex-President  Rutherford 
B.  Hayes,  he  was  introduced  by  the  Chairman,  and  spoke  as 
follows : 

"  Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen, — It  has  been  my  prefer- 
ence and  I  suppose  my  duty  to  remain  to  the  end  of  the  pro- 
gramme, not  expecting  to  be  called  upon  to  add  to  it.  The 
hour  is  too  late  to  discuss  any  of  these  topics,  and  it  seems  to 
me  if  I  were  to  say  anything  it  would  be  simply  to  try  to  make, 
from  what  we  have  heard  to-night,  a  short  catalogue  of  results, 
for  it  is  these  which  at  last  determine  the  value  of  every  human 
effort. 


84 

"  The  truth  is  that,  as  to  this  frame  of  government  that 
began  one  hundred  years  ago,  the  time  has  not  come  for  de- 
ciding finally  upon  its  value.  One  hundred  years  is  not  a  life- 
time in  the  history  of  a  nation ;  it  is  hardly  long  enough  for 
judging  of  the  governmental  framework  ;  and  yet  already  this 
Constitution  has  borne  great  fruit.  First,  it  found  us  a  weak 
confederation  of  States,  loosely  bound  together  by  a  rope  of 
sand,  and  now,  after  one  hundred  years,  as  we  hear  from 
the  South  and  the  North  and  from  all  directions,  ours  is  a 
nation  bound  together  for  good  and  bound  together  forever 
[applause],  and  is  such  a  nation  that  we  can  .say  of  it  what 
can  be  said  of  no  other  nation  of  the  globe.  It  can  do  without 
a  great  army  because  it  needs  none.  It  can  do  without  a 
splendid  navy,  because  it  needs  none.  It  can  do  without 
extensive  fortifications,  because  it  has  no  use  for  them.  The 
prestige,  the  credit,  the  wealth,  the  future  of  this  country,  under 
the  Constitution,  are  such  that  the  country  needs  none  of  these 
things.     [Applause.] 

"  We  hear  of  such  a  nation  being  the  great  war  power  of  a 
continent,  and  of  such  another  as  the  great  naval  power  of  the 
world.  It  is  the  glory  of  America,  under  the  Constitution,  to 
be  the  great  pacific  power  of  the  globe, — able  without  an  army 
or  navy  to  keep  peace  at  home,  and  to  command  respect  and 
consideration  abroad.  I  thank  the  General  of  the  Army,  that 
gallant  soldier  whom  we  all  admire  so  much,  for  the  remarks 
he  has  made.  He  has  foreseen  the  position  which  this  country 
is  to  occupy  in  the  future  in  favor  of  arbitration  as  a  means  of 
settling  international  difficulties.  Our  position  is  such  that  we 
can  command  a  hearing  by  the  world. 

"  Statesmen  abroad  expend  all  their  powers  in  financial  man- 
agement to  preserve  their  national  credit ;  and  yet,  as  all  men 
can  see,  with  their  great  debts  growing  larger  and  larger,  all 
nations  other  than  our  own  find  their  credit  growing  weaker 


85 

and  weaker  and  poorer  and  poorer,  while  we,  in  spite  of  peren- 
nial financial  blunders,  find  our  credit  growing  better  and  better. 
[Applause.]  The  task  of  statesmanship  abroad  is  to  avoid  a 
deficiency  in  revenue ;  our  concern  is  how  to  get  rid  of  our 
surplus.     So  it  goes  through  the  whole  story. 

"  Mr.  Chairman,  it  seems  that  I  have  got  into  a  speech  at  the 
end  of  the  programme,  but  I  will  finish  with  a  sentence  or  two. 
To  Washington,  more  than  to  any  other  man,  we  are  indebted 
for  the  Constitution  made  by  the  fathers.  He  was  attached  to 
it  with  a  devotion  that  was  the  master-passion  of  his  soul.  We 
call  him  '  the  father  of  his  country,'  because  he  led  it  through 
the  War  of  the  Revolution.  That  was  title  enough.  But  he 
doubly  earned  that  title  by  giving  us,  with  his  compatriots,  our 
matchless  Constitution  which  is  now  one  hundred  years  old. 
That  Constitution  was  the  work  also  of  Adams,  Hamilton, 
Madison,  Sherman,  Franklin,  and  the  immortal  patriots  asso- 
ciated with  them.  It  challenges  the  admiration  and  praise  of 
the  great  statesmen  of  Europe.  Lincoln  [applause],  a  name 
that  ne'er  shall  sink  while  there  is  an  echo  left  in  the  air,  upheld 
it  in  the  most  anxious  period  in  all  our  country's  history,  living 
for  the  Constitution  and  at  last  dying  for  the  Constitution. 
[Cheers.] 

"  Finally,  my  friends,  it  is  the  best  and  the  highest  aspiration 
that  I  can  utter  for  America  and  America's  children  in  the  ages 
that  are  to  come,  that  they  may  be  always,  and  altogether, 
worthy  of  the  Constitution  that  their  fathers  bequeathed  to 
them."     [Great  cheering.] 

The  Chairman  then  brought  the  banquet  to  a  close  with  the 
following  words : 

"  With  these  few  heartfelt  words  of  farewell  we  close  the  cere- 
monies of  the  first  centennial  celebration  of  the  framing  of  the 
Constitution.     We  have  striven  to  express,  as  best  we  might, 


86 


our  admiration  for  the  men  who  founded  this  government.  Let 
us  all  enter  the  coming  century  with  the  resolution  to  so  cher- 
ish the  Constitution  they  gave  to  us,  and  to  so  serve  the  institu- 
tions which  have  grown  up  under  its  influence  that  they  who 
shall  meet  here  one  hundred  years  from  to-night  shall  look 
back  to  us  as  to  men  who,  at  whatever  distance,  followed  faith- 
fully in  the  footsteps  of  the  immortal  members  of  the  Federal 
Convention  of  1787." 


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